On a late November morning in 1819, an exceptionally cold year, Mary Ann (informally, Marian) Evans was born the third child of Robert and Christiana Evans. Robert was a strong pragmatic man, who managed the large family estates of the Newdigate family (and already the father of two teenaged children by his first marriage), and Christina the daughter of a modestly affluent local family. The rural nature of Marian's childhood surroundings in the Nuneaton-Coventry area is recreated in some detail in her early novels, but she was also close to the industrial heartland of Warwickshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire. Here a strong dissenting community worked hard to exploit the natural abundance of coal seams, forests, and rivers, and they cultivated knowledge and intellectual ability as practical components essential for industrial and commercial progress. Marian derived from...
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Citation: Uglow, Nathan. "George Eliot". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1408, accessed 05 December 2025.]
