ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.

Detailed explanation-2: -George Eliot was the pen name of the novelist Mary Ann Evans. She grew up in Warwickshire at a time when industrialisation was transforming the countryside. Her mother died when she was 17, and in 1841 she and her father moved to Coventry which she would use as inspiration for the fictional town of Middlemarch.

Detailed explanation-3: -In 1857 Eliot chose her pen name because she said: ‘George was Mr Lewes’s Christian name, and Eliot was a good mouth-filling, easily-pronounced word’. She chose to write under a pen name, as she felt women writers were not taken seriously.

Detailed explanation-4: -She chose this pen name both to have her fiction judged separately from her previous work and to escape the stereotype that women’s writings were limited to lighthearted romances. As a man, she thought her work would be taken more seriously.

Detailed explanation-5: -Mary Ann Evans was an English writer and novelist popularly known by the pseudonym George Eliot, under which she published all of her written works. Evans first chose to write novels out of financial need.