#George Eliot

[laurapetrie]

If ever a girl looked as if she had been made of roses, that girl was her.

George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859)

[twirld]

Romola by George Eliot; with illustrations by Sir Frederick Leighton (1880) National Library of New Zeland

[petaltexturedskies]

George Eliot in a letter to Miss Lewis, dated 1 October 1841 featured in George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals

[majestativa]

My soul is so knit to yours.

— George Eliot, My Gothic Heart, (2023)

[hayleylovesjessica]

Tumblrinas like to talk about what's canon and what's not, but what about the actual literary canon? Which of the following works of Western literature have you read?

[philosophybits]

Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

[beforevenice]

it is never too late to be what you might have been.

// george eliot

[lovelautski]

what would you do if you heard a rapping at your chamber door and you open it to see this:

[todayontumblr]

[heatherfield]

@giftober 2024 | Day 16: lights

Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party  [x]

[perfectquote]

Life is like a game of whist. I don't enjoy the game much; but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.

George Eliot

[nobeerreviews]

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

-- George Eliot

[bethanydelleman]

“Oh, you like Jane Austen? You should read Jane Eyre!”

Please, people. Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë are indeed both women and they both inhabited the same wet, European island (though they only overlapped for a year when Charlotte was a baby), but they have nothing to do with each other.

Jane Austen wrote satirical comedies of manners, praised for their realism.

Charlotte Brontë wrote dramatic gothic fiction, with miraculous supernatural communication methods.

If you feel that you must recommend a Brontë, the proper Brontë is Anne.

If you feel you must recommend a woman, the proper woman is Elizabeth Gaskell (start with Wives and Daughters) or George Eliot.

If you must recommend a English Wet European Island person, the proper person is Oscar Wilde (specifically his four drawing room plays).

Charlotte Brontë wrote negative reviews of Jane Austen and in uncanny preparation for such an insult, Jane Austen mocked the concept of Attic Wives 13 years before Charlotte was even born.

(A lot of people do like both Jane Eyre and Jane Austen, but something always has felt kind of inherently sexist about grouping them together since they write completely different genres and in different time periods. Like why not group Wilde and Austen, or Dickens and Brontë? George Eliot is noted for realism, which seems like a much more sensible match to Austen than Brontë. Anyway, I’m done my little rant.)

Carry on and/or suggest me which literary people we should actually be matching up in our heads.

Edit: forgot Oscar Wilde was Irish!

[petaltexturedskies]

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love that makes life and nature harmonize.

George Eliot, in a letter to Miss Lewis, dated 1 October 1841 featured in George Eliot's Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals

[wellconstructedsentences]

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

[philosophors]

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

— George Eliot