George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, born November 22, 1819, at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, England. She was the youngest child of Robert Evans and his second wife, Christiana Pearson, and had four siblings, two by her father's first marriage and two by his second. Eliot was her father's favorite child and was brought up to follow his Protestant beliefs. However, in her early twenties, she told her father that although she admired Jesus and his teachings, she rejected the idea that the Bible was of divine origin, and she refused to go to church. This shocked her family and many others, but she refused to attend services she did not believe in. This emphasis on following her own inner promptings rather than social convention would become a marked feature of her character and her life.

After her father's death in 1849, she had little...