ABSTRACT
Late in 1864 the publisher George Smith invited Lewes to act as editorial adviser for the new paper Smith was about to bring out, the Pall Mall Gazette. It was apparently in order to support Lewes in this very well-paid but vaguely defined position, which he held until 1868, that George Eliot, then between novels, contributed four articles to the journal between March and May of 1865. 'A Word for the Germans' is the first of these. A further reason for her contributions may have been a sense of indebtedness to Smith, who had lured her away from Blackwood, her regular publisher, with an extravagant offer for Romola (1862-1863), and had lost on the transaction.
