Since then she has been at the center of literary study, and
Middlemarch (1871-1872) is now regarded as one of the outstanding masterpieces of nineteenth-century fiction.
George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans at five o'clock in the morning of St. Cecilia's Day, 22 November 1819, at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire. Her father was Robert Evans (b. 1773) and her mother was his second wife, Christiana Pearson (b. ca. 1788), whom he had married in 1813. Mary Ann had a half brother, Robert (b. 1802); a half sister, Frances (b. 1805), called Fanny; a sister, Christiana (b. 1814), called Chrissey; and a brother, Isaac (b. 1816), who was to be the most important sibling in her life. George Eliot described her father as a man who "raised himself from being an artisan to be a man whose extensive knowledge in very varied practical departments made his services valued through several counties. He had a large knowledge of buildings, of mines, of plantations, of various branches of valuation and measurement—of all that is essential to the management of large estates." These varied activities are telescoped in the word "business," which Caleb Garth, an idealized version of Robert Evans, uses to describe his work in Middlemarch.
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