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.

A lecture by Rosemary Ashton, University College London 25 November

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/eliot-relationships

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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