“It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self—never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.”

English novelist, poet, journalist, and translator, Victorian era

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist, poet, journalist, and translator of the Victorian era. She was one of the leading writers of her time. She wrote seven novels, including Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, the Radical, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. Her fiction is known for realism, psychological depth, a strong sense of place, and close attention to the countryside.