ABSTRACT
Anne Mozley, born in 1809, was part of a large and upwardly mobile family which moved from Gainsborough to Derby in 1815. Anne Mozley, the subject of this chapter, also deals with the potentially gender-related qualities of Eliots writing, but with different results. In 1859, before the sex of the person writing as George Eliot was known, Mozley's review of Adam Bede suggested, on the basis of internal evidence, that the author was a woman. Anne Mozley's early literary activities were such as might be expected from an educated woman in the provinces with religious interests. The poetry anthologies Anne Mozley edited demonstrate a broad knowledge of poetry from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, a knowledge which was to bear fruit also in her later periodical publications. Not only does Anne Mozley strive to conceal her sex by preserving her anonymity she sometimes adopts an overtly masculine voice, one which implies that both she and her readers are male.
