First published in 1885, this three-part 'autobiography' was assembled by John Cross from the letters and journals of his late wife, George Eliot. Though suppressing much in the desire to render an unconventional life 'respectable', the work remains an important initial insight into Eliot's personal and private life.
Best known for his brief marriage to George Eliot, John Cross (1840-1924) compiled this three-volume 'autobiography' of 1885 from his late wife's journals and letters. Eliot was never married to her long-term partner G. H. Lewes, and she courted further scandal when she married Cross, twenty years her junior, in 1880. While these volumes offer a valuable insight into Eliot's private reflections, what is perhaps most telling is the material left out or rewritten in Cross' efforts to lend his wife's unconventional life some respectability, which he does at the expense of what one reviewer described as Eliot's 'salt and spice'. George Eliot's Life will be of particular interest to scholars of nineteenth-century biography and literature. Volume 1 covers Eliot's life from 1819 to 1857, beginning with a brief sketch of her childhood and continuing with her move to Coventry, then to London, and travels to Geneva.
