Curated in partnership with the George Eliot Archive, this COVE edition of “The George Eliot Portrait Gallery: Perspectives on the Writer” features portraits of the writer Mary Ann Evans, known to the world as George Eliot. “The George Eliot Portrait Gallery” 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of flux, as a newly discovered painting of Eliot was authenticated as recently as 2017, and we anticipate a previously unpublished sketch of her being made public soon. Moreover, our project has expanded to include two galleries of illustrations from rare, antique sources, and we are already planning a second COVE edition to engage in a critical discussion about these images as well. “The George Eliot Image Gallery: Perspectives on the Writer’s Works” will feature two galleries, the “Selected Illustrations of George Eliot’s Works” and the “Original Illustrations of Romola.” Ultimately, it is our hope that making these scholarly resources available will evoke well-informed, scholarly engagement with the visual texts that can reflect and even influence how the writing—and the writer—are read.

This is the first omnibus scholarly edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's (then Elizabeth Barrett Barrett) protest poem "The Cry of the Children" (1843), as it was published in Blackwood's Magazine.  The editors and annotators have built on sustained scholarly engagement about the poem, its contexts, and its relationship with laboring-class poetry of the time.  This was initiated by their cooperation for "Rhyme and Reform: Victorian Working-Class Poets and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'Cry of the Children.'"  This two-day, international, multi-site symposium (Oct.