George Eliot

George Eliot (1819-1880) was the pseudonym adopted by Mary Ann Evans in order for her writing to be taken seriously and published at a time when the idea of a female author would have met with disapproval. She is an internationally renowned novelist, whose works reflect provincial life in the Victorian era with perceptive characterisation and sharp psychological insight. She wrote several novels Middlemarch, Silas Marner and Mill on the Floss being perhaps among the best known.  She was also an essayist, journalist and poet.

Eliot was born at Arbury which is near Nuneaton. From 1854 until 1878 she lived with the philosopher and critic, George Henry Lewes, a married man, who encouraged her writing. In 1880, she married John Walter Cross, but died in December of that year at 4, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London.

This statue was commissioned by the George Eliot Fellowship. There is a second later cast of 1996 outside the George Eliot Hospital, Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

Location: Newdegate Square, Nuneaton, Warwickshire.