George Eliot and Relationships

This lecture will discuss the intellectual and cultural life of Mary Ann Evans, better known as 'George Eliot', focusing on her relationships.

A lecture by Professor Rosemary Ashton OBE
University College London
25 November 2019 6PM GMT

Mary Ann Evans experienced difficult relationships with her family while growing up in Warwickshire, and with nineteenth-century London society more generally after she moved to the city and lived with a married man, George Henry Lewes. Her seeking of independence in London as a writer (with her later emergence as 'George Eliot'), her experience of rejection, and the widening of her intellectual and cultural life, will be discussed, interwoven with analysis of the deep understanding of relationships in her novels characterised by authorial sympathy and humour.

[renubansal]

Rosemary Ashton speaks so beautiful English! She has gotten perfect British accent! Beautiful!

[darwinmontanoarebalo]

I really enjoyed the conference! Thank you so much for sharing it via Youtube; I am glad not to be the only one devoted to George Eliot!!

[HorrorBot]

Loved listening to this lecture! She’s speaks so well with such emotion in her voice, it makes the lecture so much more entertaining and engaging!! Loved it!

[francescagillon]

Thank you for the quotations and their readable presentation.

[nledaig]

I cannot imagine Mary Ann Evans wearing a badge saying "Women need men like fish need bicycles" for her life seemed to require a bicycle. That the lecturer should see Chapman and his scraggy grey beard as very handsome is somewhat alarming. But she knows a lot about her topic and is entertaining.