George Eliot: The Last Victorian

George Eliot: The Last Victorian

$13.52 USD

Availability: in stock at our Melbourne warehouse.

NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: Kathryn Hughes

Format: Hardback

Number of Pages: 383


For the sheer breadth of experience embodied in her life and work, George Eliot presents an ever alluring subject for biographers. The daughter of one of the new breed of self-made businessmen, her scandalous liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes made an outcast of her until literary fame overcame "polite" scruples. Unparalleled among the great English novelists for her understanding of the important intellectual and political debates of her day, she nonetheless maintained a fervent attachment to the pragmatic middle ground, where idealism is tempered by love, habit, and history. It is no wonder that many a previous biographer has foundered in the face of so much richness and complexity, producing lopsided or not entirely coherent portraits of the writer.Kathryn Hughes's sympathetic, human, and immensely readable biography provides a truly nuanced view of Eliot, and is the first to grapple equally with the personal dramas that shaped her psyche -- particularly her rejection by her brother Isaac -- and her social and intellectual context. Together, Hughes shows how these elements forged the themes of Eliot's work, her insistance that ideological interests be subordinated to the bonds between human beings -- a message that has keen resonance in our own uneasy time.
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Description
NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.
Author: Kathryn Hughes

Format: Hardback

Number of Pages: 383


For the sheer breadth of experience embodied in her life and work, George Eliot presents an ever alluring subject for biographers. The daughter of one of the new breed of self-made businessmen, her scandalous liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes made an outcast of her until literary fame overcame "polite" scruples. Unparalleled among the great English novelists for her understanding of the important intellectual and political debates of her day, she nonetheless maintained a fervent attachment to the pragmatic middle ground, where idealism is tempered by love, habit, and history. It is no wonder that many a previous biographer has foundered in the face of so much richness and complexity, producing lopsided or not entirely coherent portraits of the writer.Kathryn Hughes's sympathetic, human, and immensely readable biography provides a truly nuanced view of Eliot, and is the first to grapple equally with the personal dramas that shaped her psyche -- particularly her rejection by her brother Isaac -- and her social and intellectual context. Together, Hughes shows how these elements forged the themes of Eliot's work, her insistance that ideological interests be subordinated to the bonds between human beings -- a message that has keen resonance in our own uneasy time.