George Eliot
Her Mind and Her Art

A examination of George Eliot's qualities as a novelist and an illustration of the deeper aspects of her works and literary outlook.

Joan Bennett (Author)

9780521091749, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 January 1948

220 pages
19.5 x 12.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.213 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Readers of Joan Bennett's works have learned to expect from her three supreme attributes - critical sensitivity, sound scholarship and cogent prose. George Eliot lives up to those expectations.' Chicago Sunday Times

Mrs Bennett finds in George Eliot's work the beginnings of certain modern developments of the novel, notably her respect for unity of design, her interest in the complexity of human personality and experience and beneath a contemporary naturalism, a feeling towards symbolic presentation. Some of the moral problems implicit in the character-studies and situations best the minds of the best of her contemporaries: some are still relevant. And an awareness of moral problems - a novelist's acceptance of novel-writing as a serious and responsible job - is now characteristic of the best modern fiction. The first three chapters of Bennett's book are biographical and deal chiefly with the formative years. The remaining eight, after defining in general George Eliot's qualities as a novelist, discuss the novels one by one and illustrate the deeper aspects of their author's outlook.

Preface
The facts
Part I. The Formative Years: Intellectual and Emotional Development: 1. Before the move to Coventry
2. Coventry
3. London
Part II. The Novels: 4. Vision and design
5. Adam Bede
6. The Mill on the Floss
7. Silas Marner
8. Romola
9. Felix Holt
10. Middlemarch
11. Daniel Deronda
List of books referred to in the text
Index.

Subject Areas: Educational: English literature [YQE], Literary studies: general [DSB]