ABSTRACT
Felix Holt is the first novel to which Eliot assigned chapter epigraphs, or mottoes, as she preferred to call them, although there is evidence that she intended to use some, based on extracts from Latin and Italian authors, in Romola. However, in the case of Romola she changed her mind, absorbing the epigraphs in the text (see Andrew Sanders (ed.), 'Appendix B: The Unused Epigraphs to Romola' in George Eliot, Romola (1863) (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984), pp. 682-5). Starting with Felix Holt, Eliot resumed her experiment, drawing on a variety of sources for her epigraphs - or writing them herself. It is the latter, unascribed epigraphs, presumed to be Eliot's, that are considered below.
