Lewes also turned his hand to novels, but, although they were fairly well received in his time, they never earned him as much praise as his nonfictional works. Lewes is chiefly remembered now, however, for his unorthodox relationship with the novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), with whom he lived from 1854 until his death in 1878. Still, several of his works have attracted the attention of twentieth-century scholars, particularly
A Biographical History of Philosophy (1845-1846),
The Life and Works of Goethe (1855), and his miscellaneous literary criticism.
Lewes was born in London on 18 April 1817 to John Lee Lewes and Elizabeth Ashweek. He was their third illegitimate son; John Lewes had had four other children by his legal wife, Elizabeth Pownall Lewes, and he abandoned both his legitimate and illegitimate families when he immigrated to Bermuda when George Henry was still a baby. When Lewes was six his mother married Capt. John Gurens Willim, an irascible man whom the entire family came to dislike.
Lewes's education was erratic. He attended boarding school in London from ages nine to eleven. From 1828 to 1830 he attended school in Jersey, where he mastered French. In 1830 the family moved to Gloucestershire, where Lewes attended Dr.
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