The George Eliot Review: Journal of the George Eliot Fellowship No. 43

Transcription

1 University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln The George Eliot Review English, Department of 2012 The George Eliot Review: Journal of the George Eliot Fellowship No. 43 Beryl Gray John Rignall Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Gray, Beryl and Rignall, John, "The George Eliot Review: Journal of the George Eliot Fellowship No. 43" (2012). The George Eliot Review This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in The George Eliot Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln.

2 THE GEORGE ELIOT REVIEW Journal of the George Eliot Fellowship ISSN x No

3 The George Eliot Review is published annually. It is distributed free of charge to members of the George Eliot Fellowship. Single copies and past issues (where available) may be obtained from Mr John Burton, 39 Lower Road, Barnacle, Coventry CV7 9LD. Enquiries about the Fellowship should also be directed to Mr Burton. Contributions are welcome on any aspect of George Eliot's life and works. Articles, no longer than 4,000 words, should be typed in double-spacing, observing the customary modes of presentation as in the MHRA style sheet, and with endnotes kept to the minimum. They should be accompanied by an abstract of about 100 words and sent to either of the editors, Dr Beryl Gray, 14 Orchard Road, LONDON N6 5TR or Dr John Rignall, Department of English, University of Warwick, COVENTRY CV 4 7 AL. Books for review are also invited. The Editors do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor does the George Eliot Fellowship accept responsibility for such views. No part of the Review may be reproduced without permission of the Editors. Front cover 'The Powder Tower' by Nelly Erichsen is reproduced from the title-page of The Story of Prague by Count Ltitzow (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1920).

4 THE GEORGE ELIOT REVIEW Journal of the George Eliot Fellowship 2012 No. 43 Published by The George Eliot Fellowship 39 Lower Road, Barnacle, Coventry CV7 9LD Printed by Berforts Limited 17 Burgess Road HASTINGS East Sussex TN354NR Typesetting by 1066 Typesetting & Graphics Flat 3, 11 Cloudesley Road ST LEONARDS-ON-SEA East Sussex TN376JW Editors: Beryl Gray and John Rignall Editorial Board: Rosemary Ashton (University College, London) Rosemarie Bodenheimer (Boston College) Michael Davis (University of the West of England) Stephen Gill (Lincoln College, Oxford) Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck College, London and University of Swansea) Margaret Harris (University of Sydney) N ancy Henry (U ni versity of Tennessee) Josephine McDonagh (King's College, London) Helen Small (Pembroke College, Oxford) A. G. van den Broek (Forest School, London)

5 Copyright: The George Eliot Fellowship 2

6 CONTENTS Notes on Contributors... 5 ARTICLES Josh Moats: Deronda and the Tigress: Buddhism, Compassion, and National Consciousness in Daniel Deronda (Prize Essay)... 7 Joanne Shattock: Models of Authorship: Margaret Oliphant and George Eliot Marianne Burton: 'There is no such thing as natural barrenness in natural women': Childless Marriages in Silas Marner and The Lifted Veil Melissa Raines: Knowing Too Much: The Burden of Consciousness in the Lifted Veil Andrew Lallier: 'The generations of ants and beavers': Classical Economics and Animals in The Mill on the Floss Peter A. Brier: From George Eliot to her 'Rabbi': An Epistolary Find BOOK REVIEWS John Carey: Dorothea's Daughter and Other Nineteenth-Century Postscripts. By Barbara Hardy Rosemarie Bodenheimer: The Life ofgeorge Eliot: A Critical Biography. By Nancy Henry John Rignall: George Eliot: Interviews and Recollections. Edited by K. K. Collins Brenda McKay: Modernizing George Eliot: The Novelist as Artist, Intellectual, Pro to-modernist, Cultural Critic. By K. M. Newton Terence Cave: George Eliot, European Novelist. By John Rignall K. M. Newton: The Art of Comparison: How Novels and Critics Compare. By Catherine Brown

7 Nancy Henry: The Business of the Novel: Economics, Aesthetics and the Case of Middlemarch. By Simon R. Frost Gill Frith: Women and Personal Property in the Victorian Novel. By Deborah Wynne Gill Frith: Landscape and Gender in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. By Eithne Henson RADIO REVIEW Donald Hawes: Silas Mamer on BBC Radio REPORTS John Burton: Annual Report for Mizue Aida: Japanese Branch Report

8 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Mizue Aida has taught at Teikyo University Junior College and is currently a lecturer at Nihon University with a particular interest in Jane Austen and George Eliot. Rosemarie Bodenheimer is Professor of English at Boston College, Massachusetts. She is the author of The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans: George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction (Cornell University Press, 1994) and most recently of Knowing Dickens (Cornell University Press, 2007). Peter A. Brier is Professor Emeritus of English at California State Uni versity, Los Angeles. His publications include Howard Mumford Jones and the Dynamics of Liberal Humanism (Univ. of Missouri Press, 1994); various articles including essays on Charles Lamb and Walter Benjamin in the Huntington Library Quarterly and Southwest Review, and an essay, 'The Hidden Agenda of Romantic Satire: Carlyle and Heine', in A Companion To Satire Ancient and Modern, ed. Ruben Quintero (Blackwell, 2007). John Burton has been Chairman of the Fellowship since 2006, when he took over from Bill Adams. He was an English teacher and Head of Department in secondary schools for over thirty years. He combines his interest in literature with an interest in local history and has published five books on local history in the Nuneaton area. Marianne Burton is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London, working on aspects of sexual euphemism in the nineteenth-century novel. John Carey is Emeritus Merton Professor of English literature at Oxford University. Terence Cave is Emeritus Professor and Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford. A specialist in early modem French literature, he also has a wider interest in European literature and has edited the Penguin edition of Daniel Deronda (1995) and the Oxford World's Classics edition of Silas Marner (1996). Gill Frith is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Warwick. She has contributed to George Eliot and Europe (1997) and the Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot (2000) and is currently working on a book on domestic interiors entitled Modernity's Changing Rooms: Bedrooms and Boudoirs in British Fiction. Donald Hawes taught for many years in schools and colleges and has lectured to the Open University and the University of the Third Age. He has published widely in the field of Victorian literature and contributed sixteen articles to the Oxford DNB. His most recent book is Charles Dickens (2007). Nancy Henry is Professor of English at the University of Tennessee and author most recently of The Life of George Eliot: A Critical Biography (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), which is reviewed in this issue. 5

9 Andrew Lallier is a graduate student in the English Department at the University of Tennessee with special interests in nineteenth-century British literature and German philosophy and literature. Brenda McKay has taught at Birkbeck College, Witwatersrand University (Johannesburg), and Hertfordshire University. She has written extensively on Victorian Culture, and is the author of George Eliot and Victorian Attitudes to Racial Diversity: Colonialism, Darwinism, Class and Gender, and Jewish Culture and Prophecy - a monograph which was honoured by Choice as an outstanding academic work of She has contributed to a series of essays to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, entitled Adapting Gaskell: Screen and Stage Versions of Elizabeth Gaskell s fiction, and is working on a book on Charlotte Bronte Josh Moats graduated from the University of Tennessee in English, Philosophy and Religious Studies in 2007 and has just completed an MA there in Victorian literature. In September he will start his PhD on Buddhism and the Victorian Novel at Miami University in Ohio. K. M. Newton is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Dundee. Among his many publications are George Eliot: Romantic Humanist (1981) and the Longman Critical Reader George Eliot (1991), and his most recent book is Modernizing George Eliot: The Novelist as Artist, Intellectual, Proto-Modernist, Cultural Critic (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), which is reviewed in this issue. Melissa Raines teaches at the University of Liverpool, the University of Chester, and Edge Hill University. Her monograph George Eliots Grammar of Being, which was published last year and reviewed in the last Review, combines close analysis of Eliot's novels with a study of her manuscripts and writing process. Melissa Raines's current research is on Anthony Trollope. John Rignall is Emeritus Reader at the University of Warwick, co-editor of the Review, and the editor of George Eliot and Europe (1997) and the Oxford Reader s Companion to George Eliot (2000). His most recent work is George Eliot, European Novelist (Ashgate, 2011), which is reviewed in this issue. Joanne Shattock is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester. She is general editor, with Elisabeth Jay, of a twenty-five volume edition of Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant ( ). 6

10 ASTLEY BOOK FARM 70,000 + quality second hand books Antiquarian, First Editions, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Childrens We buy books Open every day 1 Dam - 5pm Astley Lane, Bedworth 5 Mins junction 3, M6 Coffee Shop Now Open tel:

11 THE GEORGE ELIOT FELLOWSHIP ESSAY PRIZE THE GEORGE ELIOT FELLOWSHIP IS PLEASED TO OFFER ITS ANNUAL PRIZE OF 500 FOR A PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED PAPER ON GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE OR WORK. The winning essay will be published in the 2013 GEORGE ELIOT REVIEW. The author will also receive two years' honorary membership of the Fellowship. The competition is open to all, but may be of particular interest to graduate students. Essays should not normally exceed 4,000 words, and should be typed (or printed out) in double spacing on one side of A4 paper, leaving margins of approximately 3.5cms. Two copies should be submitted not later than 12 December 2012, and addresssed to: The Chairman 39 Lower Road Barnacle Coventry CV7 9LD The George Eliot Fellowship will appoint a panel of judges which will include a member of the Editorial Board of the George Eliot Review. The decision of the panel will be final. The prizewinner will be announced on 31 March After the adjudication entries will be returned only if a large, stamped addressed envelope has been enclosed with the entry 17

12 George Eliot's 'Cheverel Manor' tall 4~I3UV~ & Gardens, Nuneaton The Home of VISCOUNT & VISCOUNTESS DAVENTRY Gothicized by Sir Roger Newdigate in the 18th century, the Hall affords visitors magnificent and spectacular ceilings as well as paintings, furniture and porcelain. Seventeenth century stables with doorways by Wren and the upstairs Tea Rooms Open: Easter to end of September Hall: Bank Holiday weekends only (Sundays & Mondays) p.m. Garden: As Hal/2 6 p.m. Tea rooms p.m. Last admission 5 p.m.. Admission: Hall & Gardens Adults 7.50 Children 4.50 Gardens only Adults 5.50 Children 4.00 Family Ticket Group Admission: by arrangement - phone for prices Parties welcome most days by prior arrangement with Administrator Nuneaton

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14 Some of the outbuildings of the former Griff Farm, now part of Griff House and very close to the oldest, half timbered part of the building. Whitbread has applied for permission to demolish them. The Fellowship, along with local amenity groups, is opposing the demolition and is trying to persuade Whitbread to restore them. We think the George Eliot link of her first 21 years being spent growing up on the farm should ensure their retention. Photos by John Burton. 88

15 GEORGE ELIOT FELLOWSIDP PUBLICATIONS AND PRODUCTIONS 0 George Eliot A Brief Biography by Kathleen Adarns The Little Sister A life of George Eliot written for older 1.00 children by Kathleen Adarns 0 Those Of Us Who The Men in George Eliot's Life by Kathleen Adarns 7.50 Loved Her 0 The Pitkin Guide to (24 glossy pages with many coloured illustrations) 3.50 George Eliot 0 A Community of Interest The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship Favourite Scenes from A 60-minute audio cassette read by GabrieI Woolf 5.00 George Eliot 0 A Further Selection of A 60 minute audio cassette read by Gabriel Woolf 5.00 Favourite Scenes 0 A Leather Bookmark showing views of the George Eliot Country in 1.00 assorted colours o Coloured postcards (i) a portrait of George Eliot from a modern painting 15p (ii) the George Eliot statue Please tick the items you require. Send no money for any of the above; an invoice will be sent with the goods to include postage. Name Address Please send to the Secretary - The Chairman, The George Eliot Fellowship 39 Lower Road, Barnacle, Coventry CV7 9LD 91

16 The George Eliot Fellowship Subscription Rates Join the Fellowship in September 2012 and get four months' membership free, with nothing to pay until January We are simplifying the categories of membership and ensuring that all our events that are advertised for the general public have special discounted rates for our members. We are also offering discounted membership rate for couples, where one set of material is delivered to one address, but where both can benefit from the discounted membership rates for events Membership rates Individuals Couples at one address Senior citizens (over 60): individuals Senior citizens: couples Students/full time education We encourage members to gift aid their subscriptions. Full details and queries about membership from: Juliet Hopper, Membership Secretary 5 Caldecote Close, Weddington, Nuneaton CVlO OET juliet.hopper@googl .com Until further notice, notices and queries about other aspects of the George Eliot Fellowship will be dealt with by: John Burton, Chairman 39 Lower Road, Barnacle, Coventry CV7 9LD (024) jkburton@tiscali.co.uk

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