ABSTRACT
In nineteenth-century England, Mary Ann Evans' disparaging and spiteful view of Jewish civilization and Jews was hardly unusual. But the real turning point in George Eliot's attitude towards "everything specifically Jewish" came in l866, when she met Emanuel Deutsch. The only lasting effect that Deutsch's labors had was on George Eliot's writing about Jews and Zionism. Deutsch's knowledge of Amharic and its cognate languages brought an invitation to accompany the British Army to Abyssinia, where, it was thought, valuable manuscripts and other antiquities might be discovered. He declined the proposal, but it made him think seriously enough about travel in the East to respond with alacrity to a British Museum commission that would enable him to visit the Holy Land in spring l869. George Eliot heard the news as she was planning Daniel Deronda. Eliot's identification with Deutsch was intensified by the hostile reaction of Victorian intellectual circles to precisely those parts of Deronda that reflected his influence.
