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Introduction

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George Eliot: An Intellectual Life

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Abstract

The awareness that George Eliot was an intellectual turned novelist informs most discussions of her life and work. She was exceptionally well-read in philosophy, theology and science; she and her associates discussed such subjects in conversations, letters, journalism, and their substantial books. She has thus been lauded as a sage articulating universal truths; her imagination has been seen to operate in terms of a conflict between intellect and emotions; her novels have been analysed as vehicles for the discussion of philosophical ideas.

every artist, poet or novelist is also a thinker whether he chooses or not …. The imagination is not a faculty working apart; it is the whole mind thrown into the act of imagining; and the value of any act of imagination … will depend on the total strength and total furnishing of the mind.1

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Notes and References

  1. Quoted from David Masson, The British Novelists and Their Styles (1859), pp. 269–301

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  28. Quoted in Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin, The Nineteenth-Century Woman (London and New York, 1978) p. 48.

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  29. Quoted in Gordon S. Haight, ‘A New George Eliot Letter’, YULG XLVI (July 1971) 24.

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Authors
  1. Valerie A. Dodd
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© 1990 Valerie A. Dodd

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Dodd, V.A. (1990). Introduction. In: George Eliot: An Intellectual Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372863_1

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