Fun facts from the life of Victorian novelist George Eliot, author of Middlemarch
1. She received £20 for her first book – which was a translation of a work of biblical scholarship. Before she reinvented herself as ‘George Eliot’, Mary Anne Evans (it’s also been spelled Mary Ann and Marian) was a translator of German works of ‘Higher Criticism’. Although of course she never attended university – no woman could until later in the century – Evans was exceedingly well-educated and undertook the translation of David Strauss’ Das Leben Jesu, or ‘Life of Jesus’, when she was in her mid-twenties. The book was controversial because it claimed that although a historical Jesus had probably existed, he was not the son of God.