ABSTRACT
These 'Leaves', showing George Eliot at her most ponderously sibylline in thought and manner, were first published by Charles Lee Lewes in the authorized edition of her essays in 1884. The following account of them is taken from his preface to that collection:
The opportunity afforded by this republication seemed a suitable one for giving to the world some 'notes', as George Eliot simply called them, which belong to a much later period, and which have not been previously published. The exact date of their writing cannot be fixed with any certainty, but it must have been some time between the appearance of 'Middlemarch' and that of 'Theophrastus Such'. They were probably written without any distinct view to publication— some of them for the satisfaction of her own mind; others perhaps as memoranda, and with an idea of working them out more fully at some later time. It may be of interest to know that, besides the 'notes' here given, the note-book contains four which appeared in 'Theophrastus Such', three of them practically as they there stand; and it is not impossible that some of those in the present volume might also have been so utilised had they not happened to fall outside the general scope of the work. The marginal titles are George Eliot's own, but for the general title, 'Leaves from a Note-Book', I am responsible.
