SOURCE: Rogers, Philip. “Lessons for Fine Ladies: Tolstoj and George Eliot's Felix Holt, The Radical.” Slavic and East European Journal 29, no. 4 (winter 1985): 379-92.

In the following essay, Rogers discusses Eliot's criticism of frivolity and materialism in middle-class women in Felix Holt, a criticism shared by Leo Tolstoy, who admired the novel.

Tolstoj read George Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical twice in his lifetime: the first reading was probably in 1867-68;¹ the second (in February 1885) he noted in a letter to his wife: “I'm reading Eliot's Felix Holt. It's a splendid book. I had read it before, but at a time when I was very stupid [he was then writing War and Peace], and I had completely forgotten it. It's a thing that needs to be translated, if it hasn't been translated. … I haven't finished it yet, and I'm afraid the ending will spoil it. My brother Seryozha gave...