“But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.”

Mary Ann Evans, a Victorian English novelist and critic, wrote under the male pseudonym George Eliot. She is best known for her psychologically nuanced novels exploring human complexity, particularly *Middlemarch* and *Adam Bede*. Her work remains influential for its realistic portrayal of rural and social life.