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Irony upon Irony: The Persistence of Gordon Haight’s Perceptions of Edith Simcox (1844–1901)

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

Abstract

We all know that we intentionally or unintentionally insert ourselves into everything we write. There is no better example of this than the biographers’ treatments of Edith Simcox and her passionate admiration of George Eliot. Each of George Eliot’s biographers has created a portrait of Simcox which reflects his or her own self-projection in the attempt to create an “ideal” image of Eliot. Fulmer’s comments in this chapter focus on the part of each Eliot biography that deals with Edith Simcox. Basically, Eliot’s biographers have not altered the image of Eliot that was portrayed by Gordon S. Haight, the leading Eliot scholar. All of Eliot’s biographers quote extensively from the biographical facts that Simcox provides about Eliot in her works while protecting her from the “taint” of Simcox’s love.

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Fulmer, C.M. (2017). Irony upon Irony: The Persistence of Gordon Haight’s Perceptions of Edith Simcox (1844–1901). In: Ayres, B. (eds) Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56750-1_15

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