About the Author

Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) (1819-80) was a philosopher, journalist and translator before she became a novelist, her first stories being published in 1856. She led an unconventional life, co-editing the liberal journal The Westminster Review for three years and living for twenty years with the married man and philosopher George Henry Lewes. Her novels are among the greatest of the nineteenth century. Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda are also published in the Penguin English Library.