George Eliot

$3.75

FIRST-RATE biographies are scarce these days, but here is one. George Eliot (née Mary Ann Evans), besides being the most “intellectual” of the great Victorian novelists, was an extraordinary woman — a rewarding subject of whom there has been no recent all-round study. A young girl of formidable piety, she broke with religion (to the extent of crowning her solemn person with an “anti,supernatural” — and vastly unbecoming — bonnet); she defied the marriage laws, and challenged discussion “on every matter except dinner and debts.” “The first,”she said, “must be eaten, the second must be paid. These are my only prejudices.” Mr. Bullett’s “essay" is two thirds “life,” one third “books,” and interesting throughout.