George Eliot: The Last Victorian

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Summary: Scrutinizes the Victorian society that Mary Evans lived in
Review: George Eliot: The Last Victorian is an intimate biography of noted author Mary Ann Evans, who is perhaps better known by the pen name of George Eliot (1819-1880). Some of Ms. Evans' most famous works include the novels Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Adam Bede. This informative biography focuses quite closely on Evans' life, including her friendships with Dickens and Trollope, and the controversial scandal of her relationship to a married writer George Henry Lewes. Biographer Kathryn Hughes also scrutinizes the Victorian society that Mary Evans lived in and wrote so much about. Even Queen Victoria enjoyed books by George Eliot, but you don't need royal blood to enjoy this intriguing and meticulously presented biography.

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Summary: Workmanlike Bio
Review: Hughes' life of Eliot is solid, comprehensive, and given its dazzling subject, remarkably tedious. The book provides an ample chronicle of Eliot's documented life without ever bringing Marian Evans or her marvelous writings to life.

Hughes is much better at piling on the details of Victorian intellectual life than working her way inside the creative processes that created Middlemarch, Adam Bede, and Daniel Deronda. The first half of the book, covering Evans' family life and difficult early adulthood, reads well, the impressive accumulation of research making up for lack of narrative.

But when Evans creates Eliot and the first of her fictions, the book should snap to life. It instead deflates, dutifully cranking out novel synopses and recounting scandals without ever getting at why Eliot's fiction was so beloved in her day, and remains so today.

A novelist of uncanny power and tremendous influence, Eliot deserves a biography at the level of Peter Ackroyd's spectacular life of Dickens. We're still waiting...

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Summary: Eliot: All Too Human
Review: I never thought a biography could be such a page-turner. Credos to Hughes for succeeding deliciously in bringing Eliot to life with all her faults and insecurity, in the fullest context of Victorian Britain! The fact that towards the end of the book, the reader starts to tire a bit of the description of repeated character flaws in the person of George Eliot only attests to the realness of the biography, bringing all of the multifacted personality behind the writing to light. Her deep-seated insecurity and her desperate struggle to cope with it should be comforting to know for all who suffer qualms about themselves from time to time. And plus, the touch of humor in Hughes's writing every once in a while was a joy. I never went near Eliot's books since childhood, I did not know much about either her or her works, and it was sheer fluke that I came across this book, but now I am glad I did.

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Summary: enjoyable, but...
Review: I thought Hughes did a good job capturing the historical context in which George Eliot lived and wrote, and gave a sense of Eliot's personality, particularly Eliot's transformation emotionally and intellectually. However, I was distracted by what seemed like the author's tendency to jump around chronologically in attempts to pull out themes and conclusions about Eliot; at times it felt like she lost track of what she had discussed.

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Summary: A Thoroughly Enjoyable Biography
Review: I thought this was a wonderful book. I couldn't put it down, actually. Hughes may not be a great writer; on a few occasions I felt that her style was merely adequate. She is, however, a great biographer. I don't think I have found any recent biography on an author as enjoyable throughout. Hughes appears to me as being a tad Victorian herself, which I do not consider a flaw. I suppose that some of those who deeply detest 19th century sentimentality might find, for example, the account of Eliot's funeral a bit maudlin.

I should point out that I share this biographer's deep sympathy for George Eliot. Hughes truly appreciates Marian Evans and G.H. Lewes as people. A reader who feels that a good biographer should detest her subject - as seems to have been a trend in recent times - will be disappointed by this book.

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Summary: Interesting, flawed
Review: Kathryn Hughes' biography of George Eliot is informative and interesting, written in a manner that is always lively if sometimes a touch vulgar. It helped me to get a sense of how the supreme inwardness of GE's mature work came through her life-long and never fully successful struggle towards freedom and maturity for herself. What KH has to say about GE's novels, though nowhere deep or original, is mainly adequate for her purpose, which makes it surprising that the only things she says about Dickens's work are childish. Her insulting treatment of F. R. Leavis's great contributions to our understanding of GE is less surprising if no less deplorable. It is also a shame that the cover on the paperback is from the most untruthful of all the portraits of GE - the one that goes furthest in rendering as insipidly pretty a face which was, as Henry James said, "magnificently ugly".

Rating:
Summary: Fine basic biography on the life of this essential writer
Review: Though the book was overall a bit biased toward Eliot's needy side, and didn't include quite enough literary criticism for my taste, I still found this a great and very informative read, especially for those with not a lot of background on the subject of this major Victorian writer.