George Eliot: Voice of a Century : A Biography (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Frederick Karl's magisterial biography of George Eliot proves her to be one of the most fascinating and iconic individuals of her time. Karl, author of commanding biographies of Conrad, Faulkner, and Kafka, meticulously brings Eliot to life. He re-creates her world, London society, and intellectual thought, as well as the world of the gifted or fortunate. He shows how Eliot transformed herself, taking new names as her self developed and grew. With his discussion of Eliot's life, Karl portrays what life was was like for a woman during that time and identifies important women's issues.

Eliot, torn between her desire to conserve the past and her urge to change the limitations imposed by class and gender, proves to be a fascinating individual beckoning towards our twentieth-century sense of the modern. Karl's is an unforgettable portrait of a writer whose profound works are recognized today as literary masterpieces.

From Publishers Weekly

English novelist George Eliot, born Mary Anne Evans, defied Victorian convention and her father's Anglican propriety by eloping in 1854 with biographer-novelist George Henry Lewes, a married man living apart from his wife. Cocooned in this common-law marriage, she adopted her masculine pen name both to facilitate publication and "as a way of taking on power and protection she did not feel." She soon achieved fame and wealth with novels (Silas Marner; Middlemarch) that are preoccupied with retribution, blackmail, murder and secret selves whose disclosure leads to destruction. In the fullest portrait to date of Eliot's (1819-1890) emotional life and artistic development, New York University English professor Karl (Franz Kafka: Representative Man) reveals a woman of deep contradictions. Eliot's fictional heroines are rebels who put to shame male ego and presumptions of power, yet she was politically conservative and believed that women were not ready for the franchise. This masterful biography illumines neglected facets of Eliot's life and work-her lifelong illnesses, her translation of Spinoza and her neglected novels Felix Holt, the Radical and Daniel Deronda; the latter's protagonist, of mixed Jewish and Christian heritage, is emblematic of Eliot's "reaching toward some cure for the Western world as for herself." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 708 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st ed edition (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393037851
• ISBN-13: 978-0393037852
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,687,788 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Study of an Amazing Intellect, May 28, 2003

By	Robert Derenthal "bucherwurm" (California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evens, author of arguably the greatest novel in the Victorian era, Middlemarch, was not just an author but an intellectual giant. She translated works of philosophy from the German and from Latin; knew and exchanged ideas with the brightest minds of the time; was fluent in 7 languages (French, Italian, German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Spanish), and was compelled by a natural curiosity to acquire knowledge all through her life.

Her life with a married man created a Victorian scandal, yet by the time of her death in 1880 she was England's most celebrated author visited even by Queen Victoria's daughters.

This biography is a thorough, accessible and engrossing book. Author Karl is a fan of Eliot's yet hides none of her blemishes. While he generally refuses to speculate on a lot of Victorian gossip regarding her life, he at times annoys the reader with some unwarranted attempts to psychoanalyze her (I do get tired of the injection of Freud into literature). The slowest parts of the book deal with her frequent trips to Europe. We learn what she did on Tuesday in Berlin, and then her activities in Hamburg on Wednesday. While I realize that the recording of such information is important in providing a fairly complete detail of her life, I tend to nod a bit at the lengthy reports of her travels.

Historically we are blessed with a huge number of extant correspondence of Eliot. The author makes good use of these letters, yet the book does not turn into an epistolary work i.e. a book of nothing but verbatim letters.

One of my purely personal problems with the book was that I have not read all of Eliot's novels. Mr. Karl, of necessity perhaps, relates much of the plots of her books, and thus creates a real spoiler for the novels that I haven't read. That's my problem, of course, and not the author's.

It would seem that people today are probably unaware of this important author who was known throughout England during her writing lifetime. Her novels and her life are an important part of the literary canon. I heartily recommend this well crafted book

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Study of an Amazing Intellect, May 28, 2003

By	Robert Derenthal "bucherwurm" (California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evens, author of arguably the greatest novel in the Victorian era, Middlemarch, was not just an author but an intellectual giant. She translated works of philosophy from the German and from Latin; knew and exchanged ideas with the brightest minds of the time; was fluent in 7 languages (French, Italian, German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Spanish), and was compelled by a natural curiosity to acquire knowledge all through her life.

Her life with a married man created a Victorian scandal, yet by the time of her death in 1880 she was Englands most celebrated author visited even by Queen Victorias daughters.

This biography is a thorough, accessible and engrossing book. Author Karl is a fan of Eliots yet hides none of her blemishes. While he generally refuses to speculate on a lot of Victorian gossip regarding her life, he at times annoys the reader with some unwarranted attempts to psychoanalyze her (I do get tired of the injection of Freud into literature). The slowest parts of the book deal with her frequent trips to Europe. We learn what she did on Tuesday in Berlin, and then her activities in Hamburg on Wednesday. While I realize that the recording of such information is important in providing a fairly complete detail of her life, I tend to nod a bit at the lengthy reports of her travels.

Historically we are blessed with a huge number of extant correspondence of Eliot. The author makes good use of these letters, yet the book does not turn into an epistolary work i.e. a book of nothing but verbatim letters.

One of my purely personal problems with the book was that I have not read all of Eliots novels. Mr. Karl, of necessity perhaps, relates much of the plots of her books, and thus creates a real spoiler for the novels that I havent read. Thats my problem, of course, and not the authors.

It would seem that people today are probably unaware of this important author who was known throughout England during her writing lifetime. Her novels and her life are an important part of the literary canon. I heartily recommend this well crafted book

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating but slightly flawed, June 27, 2008

By	La Profa (usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: George Eliot: Voice of a Century; A Biography (Paperback)

In many ways, this is a thorough historical and cultural contextualization and biography of Eliot's life, but I was also (like reviewer above)distracted by Karl's pronouncements on Eliot's values, psyche, motives and feelings, to wit: "Forms of behavior were more important to her than how people survived"; "Fictional fathers force us to reevaluate E's psychological response to a male-dominated household"; he asserts that Dorothea experiences "sexual frustration" in her marriage to Casaubon; his claim that E pursued "married men" specifically; her headaches as manifesting "hostility" or "guilt feelings" (which may well have been true, but Karl doesn't provide an adequate demonstration of the connections; etc. At times, his generalizations about her fictional characters--especially with regard to gender roles--are easily contradicted by any number of counter-examples.

Overall, however, a highly recommended biography which reveals the author's complete scholarly dedication to thoroughness as well as his devotion to his subject.

I recommend the book, which does an excellent job of filling in the socio-cultural context of E's era, but take Karl's speculations with a grain of salt!