ABSTRACT
Nuneaton, Warwickshire, to Robert Evans, the manager of the Arbury estate, and Christiana Evans (née Pearson), a daughter of a local farmer
* Peterloo massacre; Byron: Don Juan (Cantos I-II); Scott: Ivanhoe
1820 • Move to Griff House, Arbury * Death of George III and accession of George IV
1824 • ME begins her education at Miss Lathom’s school, Attleborough
1825 * Stockton and Darlington railway opened
1828 • ME moves to Mrs Wallington’s school, Nuneaton
1829 * Catholic Emancipation Act passed
1830 * Death of George IV and accession of William IV; July revolution in France;
Comte: Cours de philosophie positive; Tennyson: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical
1832 • ME moves to Misses Franklin’s school, Coventry * First Reform Bill passed; death of Sir Walter Scott
1833 * The Oxford Movement begun
1834 * Poor Law Reform Act passed
1835 • ME leaves school and returns home to help her family to nurse her termin-
ally ill mother * Strauss: Das Leben Jesu
1836 • Death of ME’s mother * Dickens: The Pickwick Papers
1837 • Christiana Evans, ME’s sister, marries Edward Clarke, a local doctor; ME
takes over the responsibility for her father’s household and embarks on an extensive course of reading
* Death of William IV and accession of Victoria; Carlyle: The French Revolution
1838 * The People’s Charter drawn up – the beginning of the Chartist movement;
Hennell: An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity
1840 • ME’s literary debut: ‘Farewell’, a poem, published in the Christian Observer
1841 • ME and her father move to Foleshill, Coventry; Isaac Evans, ME’s brother,
marries Sarah Rawlins, a daughter of a merchant; ME meets Charles and Cara Bray; her religious convictions undermined
* Feuerbach: Das Wesen des Christenthums
1842 • ME refuses to accompany her father to church; meets Sara Hennell
1843 * Ruskin: Modern Painters
1846 • Translation of Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu published anonymously by John
Chapman; ME begins to publish book reviews in the Herald * The Corn Laws repealed
1847 * E. Brontë: Wuthering Heights; C. Brontë: Jane Eyre; Thackeray: Vanity Fair
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1848 * Revolutions in Europe
1849 • Death of ME’s father; ME’s first holiday, with the Brays, on the Continent
(France, Italy, Switzerland); winter in Geneva
1850 • ME returns to England; begins to publish in the Westminster Review * The re-establishment of Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales;
death of Wordsworth; Tennyson appointed Poet Laureate; Tennyson: In Memoriam; Wordsworth: The Prelude
1851 • ME moves to London, staying in Chapman’s lodging house; meets Herbert
Spencer and George Henry Lewes; assumes the assistant editorship of the Westminster Review
* The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park
1852 • The first of ten issues of the Westminster Review edited by ME published * Dickens: Bleak House
1853 • ME begins a relationship with Lewes and moves out of Chapman’s house * The Crimean War breaks out
1854 • ME leaves the Westminster Review; translation of Feuerbach’s Das Wesen
des Christenthums published (under ME’s own name) by Chapman; leaves England for Germany to live with Lewes, and adopts the name of Marian Evans Lewes (MEL)
1855 • MEL and Lewes return to England * Browning: Men and Women
1856 • MEL begins work on ‘Amos Barton’ * The Treaty of Paris ends the Crimean War
1857 • ‘Amos Barton’, ‘Mr Gilfil’s Love-Story’ and ‘Janet’s Repentance’ serialised
in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine; MEL adopts the pseudonym of George Eliot; notifies her family of her relationship with Lewes; relations with her family severed; MEL begins work on Adam Bede
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1858 • Scenes of Clerical Life published by Blackwood; MEL reveals the identity of
George Eliot to Blackwood; MEL and Lewes visit Germany and Austria
1859 • MEL begins work on The Mill on the Floss; Adam Bede published by
Blackwood; death of MEL’s sister Christiana; MEL writes ‘The Lifted Veil’; ‘The Lifted Veil’ published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine; the identity of George Eliot becomes public knowledge
* Darwin: On the Origin of Species
1860 • The Mill on the Floss published by Blackwood; MEL and Lewes visit France,
Italy and Switzerland; Lewes’s son Charles moves to London to live with MEL and Lewes; MEL writes ‘Brother Jacob’ and begins work on Silas Marner
* Dickens: Great Expectations
1861 • Silas Marner published by Blackwood; another visit to France, Italy, and
Switzerland; MEL begins work on Romola * The unification of Italy; the American Civil War breaks out
1862 • Serialisation of Romola begins in the Cornhill Magazine
1863 • Romola published by Smith, Elder & Co.; MEL and Lewes purchase their
first house, The Priory, Regent’s Park
1864 • Death of MEL’s half-brother Robert; visit to Venice; ‘Brother Jacob’
published in the Cornhill Magazine; MEL begins work on The Spanish Gypsy
1865 • Visit to Paris; Charles Lewes marries; MEL begins work on Felix Holt, the
Radical; another visit to France * The American Civil War ends
1866 • Visit to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany; Felix Holt, the Radical
published by Blackwood; visit to Paris
1867 • Visit to the Continent (France, Spain) continued; visit to Germany; MEL
writes ‘Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt’ * Second Reform Bill
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1868 • ‘Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt’ and The Spanish Gypsy published
by Blackwood; visit to Germany and Switzerland * Browning: The Ring and the Book
1869 • MEL begins work on Middlemarch; visit to Italy; MEL and Lewes first meet
John Walter Cross; Lewes’s son Thornton arrives in England, to be nursed by MEL and Lewes through the final stages of his illness
1870 • Visit to Germany and Austro-Hungary * Forster’s Education Act; Franco-Prussian war breaks out; death of Dickens
1871 • Serialisation of Middlemarch begins * The unification of Germany; Germany’s victory in the Franco-Prussian war
1872 • Visit to Germany; Middlemarch published by Blackwood * Ballot Act
1873 • Visit to France and Germany; MEL begins work on Daniel Deronda
1874 • The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems published by Blackwood; visit to
France and Belgium * Hardy: Far from the Madding Crowd
1875 • The death, in South Africa, of Lewes’s son Herbert * Trollope: The Way We Live Now
1876 • Daniel Deronda serialised; visit to France, Switzerland, and Germany; Daniel
Deronda published in book form by Blackwood; MEL and Lewes purchase a country house, The Heights, in Witley, Surrey
* Queen Victoria declared Empress of India
1877 • MEL meets Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria
1878 • The Cabinet Edition of George Eliot’s works initiated; MEL begins work on
Impressions of Theophrastus Such; meets the Princess Royal, the Crown Princess of Germany; death of Lewes
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1879 • Emotional crisis following Lewes’s death; Impressions of Theophrastus
Such published by Blackwood; friendship with Cross developing; death of Blackwood
* Meredith: The Egoist
1880 • MEL marries Cross (6 May); correspondence with her brother re-established;
honeymoon in France, Italy, Austria and Germany; move to Cheyne Walk, Chelsea; MEL (Mrs John Walter Cross) dies (22 December); buried at Highgate Cemetery
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