The writer George Eliot was born on the Arbury Estate in Warwickshire in 1819.
She was baptised with the name Mary Anne Evans and George Eliot was just one of five names she adopted through various periods in her life.
This mysterious behaviour reflected her difficult relationships, affairs and infamous conduct that still amaze today.
| |  | Chilvers Coton Church, where Mary Ann was baptised
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Mary Ann had a life of hidden identities and rumours, which is reflected in her greatest works - Middlemarch, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda.
Her first major rebellion was against religion. After visiting intellectual friends she appalled her father by refusing to go to church.
Although she had previously been very religious, she declared her new beliefs meant she would no longer worship in church. This sparked a huge row and upset her father greatly, although the two remained close until his death in 1849.
After her father's death Mary Ann left Warwickshire and moved to London, still single after a broken engagement.
When Mary Ann first moved to London she stayed with the handsome John Chapman and his wife and mistress.
She started calling herself Marian Evans to make her name more alluring. It is suspected she became another of Chapman’s lovers and she soon returned to Warwickshire in an emotional state.
| |  | Pencil portrait of George Eliot by Burton
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Soon after, Chapman asked her to return to London to be his editor on the Westminster Review.
Despite this he turned down her affections and it is reported he cruelly told her she was ugly. She took the job anyway, but her identity remained secret as editor was seen as being too senior a role for a woman.
The intellectual Herbert Spencer was Eliot’s next love, although he too dumped her, saying she was not attractive enough. He even published articles on female ugliness, using descriptions that friends recognised as being Eliot’s features.
| |  | The George Eliot pub - a sin she might have ironically enjoyed
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George Henry Lewes was the next love of Eliot’s life. He was married and had a family, although it was widely known that a number of his children were actually fathered by his best friend.
Eliot’s affair added to this already scandalous situation, culminating in the pair running away together. They lived in sin and Eliot was accused of breaking the family home and was shunned by Victorian society.
In 1859 they moved out of London and called themselves Mr and Mrs Lewes, although they remained unmarried.
These events and the emotional turmoil that surround them are mirrored in Mill on the Floss, which Eliot wrote years later.
| |  | Astley Castle, one of many local places used for scenes in Eliot's books
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It was whilst living with George Henry Lewes that Mary Anne started writing seriously.
Worried her reputation would affect their success and aware that female writers were not as respected as male authors, she wrote under the name George Eliot.
Her work became hugely popular and the mystery of their authorship soon started more rumours. Fakes stepped forward pretending to be the author and the literary society of the day was buzzing with the possibility that it could be a fallen woman writing the books.
After a devoted relationship of 25 years with Marian, in 1878 George Henry Lewes died. Although deeply upsetting this at least gave Marian a chance to gain more respectability as a widow.
But, amazingly, although she was almost 60 years-old, Marian outraged society again by marrying John Cross just 18 months after George's funeral.
A friend of the family, Cross was over 20 years younger than Marian and was rumoured to be gay.
The scandal exploded when Cross fell off a balcony during their honeymoon in Venice. This was widely suspected to be a suicide attempt.
| |  | Cheyne Walk, the final home of Marian and Cross
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Despite the rumours, Cross survived the marriage, as just seven months after the wedding, on 22 December 1880, Marian died at their Chelsea home, 4 Cheyne Walk.
In a final scandalous act, she asked to be burried beside her lover George Henry Lewes in Highgate Cemetery.
Following footsteps
| | Follow the links on the left for more on George Eliot, including a guided tour and a walk of Nuneaton that will get you close to the early sights that inspired North Warwickshire’s most famous lady.
Just print out the tour and go exploring, or read about the sights and enjoy the photographs that trace her early years.
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