ABSTRACT
GEORGE ELIOT wrote most of her articles in the 1850's, after she had outgrown the self-conscious awkwardness of her provincial days and before she took on the new self-consciousness of her fame. They have in consequence the freedom and occasional raciness typical of her mind in those years. The reader familiar only with the wide tolerance of her novels will discover in her articles a surprising severity of judgment, and sometimes, as in her attacks on Cumming and Young, a fierce gusto in denunciation. Despite the rather ponderously allusive style characteristic of almost all Victorian periodical writing, there are frequent moments of humour and real wit in her comments on books and men. The characteristic earnestness and seriousness of her articles are not defects in response to appropriately weighty subjects, and in George Eliot they may frequently flare up into passionate argu ment when she grapples with a theme that engages her deepest convictions. She had an accurately informed, wide-ranging intelligence, which, though it produces some heaviness, gives her articles the weight and strength that has made them endure far better than the ordinary run of Victorian journalism.
