George Eliot Archive Dashboard
Description
Featuring portraits of George Eliot and illustrations from her works.
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
Romola was the only George Eliot novel illustrated in its first edition, and this gallery, curated in collaboration with the George Eliot Archive, features the original illustrations by Sir Frederic Leighton. Eliot had requested that a talented artist illustrate the novel, and Leighton was known for his historical genre paintings, especially his Florentine Renaissance scenes. He seemed an ideal illustrator for a novel set in fifteenth-century Florence. While Eliot was pleased with his work overall, there were some conflicts. At one point, she wrote to Leighton, "I am quite convinced that illustrations can only form a sort of overture to the text" (Barrington 1906, 4: 55-56). We invite you to consider the relationship between text and image-- as well as the relationship between an author and an artist corresponding throughout the installments of a serial... more
Curated in collaboration with the George Eliot Archive, this gallery provides access to a selection of rare illustrations accompanying some of the major novels and poems by George Eliot. The original publication date is included in each title to provide context, but most of these illustrators' artwork was featured in editions that were published much later.
Curated in partnership with the George Eliot Archive, the "George Eliot Portrait Gallery" features portraits of the writer Mary Ann Evans, known to the world as George Eliot. This collection is remarkable in the number and scope of rare portraits that it presents. And as the editorial introduction discusses, the collection remains in an exciting state of flux, as a newly discovered painting of Eliot was authenticated as recently as 2017, and we anticipate a previously unpublished sketch of her being made public soon. It is our hope that making these scholarly resources available will promote well-informed, scholarly engagement with the visual texts that can reflect and even influence how the writing—and the writer—are read.