Published in 1879, this is Eliot’s last completed work, and perhaps her most underrated. It consists of a series of essays told by a nameless English bachelor. Though critics harshly judged the work as “ponderous and moralizing” when it was published, today’s readers will recognize Eliot’s keen intelligence, sharp wit, and intriguing insights in such essays as “A Too Deferential Man, ” “A Political Molecule, ” and “Only Temper.”
Circa l’autore
George Eliot (1819-1880), born Mary Ann Evans, was a pioneering woman novelist in the Victorian era. She wrote under a male pen name in order to be taken seriously as an author and maintain a private life. Known for her penetrating psychological insights, her first success was Adam Bede; her classic Middlemarch.