Macmillan Collector’s Library: Middlemarch

George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819. Her father was the land agent of Arbury Hall in Warwickshire, in the library of which Eliot embarked upon a brilliant self-education. She moved to London in 1850 and shone in its literary circles. It was, however, her novels of English rural life that brought her fame, starting with Adam Bede, published under her new pen-name in 1859. She went on to publish novels including The Mill on the Floss in 1860 and Middlemarch in 1871 as well as poetry and nonfiction of which Queen Victoria was one of her most devoted readers. She died in 1880.