Table Of ContentGEORGE ELIOT: A CENTENARY TRIBUTE
Also by Gordon S. Haight
THE GEORGE ELIOT LETTERS (9 vols) (editor)
GEORGE ELIOT: A BIOGRAPHY
GEORGE ELIOT
A Centenary Tribute
Edited by
Gordon S. Haight and
Rosemary T. V anArsdel
M
MACMILLAN
© Gordon S. Haight and Rosemary T. VanArsdel 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First edition 1982
Reprinted 1985
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-05971-3 ISBN 978-1-349-05969-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05969-0
Contents
Preface vu
Notes on the Contributors vm
I George Eliot's Bastards
Gordon S. Haight I
2 George Eliot's Language of the Sense
Juliet McMaster II
3 A Meredithian Glance at Gwendolen Harleth
Elizabeth A. Daniels 28
4 Middlemarch and the New Humanity
Ruth apRoberts 38
5 'Stealthy Convergence' in Middlemarch
Robert B. Heilman 47
6 Antique Gems from Romola to Daniel Deronda
Joseph Wiesenfarth 55
7 The Choir Invisible: The Poetics of Humanist Piety
Martha S. Vogeler 64
8 How George Eliot's People Think
Jacob Korg 82
9 George Eliot and the Russians
Miriam H. Berlz'n 90
I 0 George Eliot and her Biographers
Ira Bruce Nadel I07
II The Ambivalence of The Mill on the Floss
IanAdam I22
I2 The Unity of Felix Holt
Florence Sandler I37
I3 'This Petty Medium': In the Middle of Middlemarch
John F. Hulcoop I 53
Index I67
v
Pref3:ce
During the year 1980 many observances of the centenary of
George Eliot's death paid tribute to her life and works. Sponsored
by the George Eliot Fellowship of Great Britain, a stone was
placed to her memory in Poets' Comer of Westminster Abbey,
rectifying a century-old injustice. In his address Professor Haight
declared that in her hands 'the novel, too long a trivial pastime,
became a compelling moral force, which has established George
Eliot firmly at the heart of the Great Tradition with Jane Austen
and Henry James'.
Another observance was the George Eliot Centennial Confer
ence held 10-12 April on the campus of the University of Puget
Sound, Tacoma, Washington. Scholars gathered there from all
over the world to hear a group of twenty-six papers presented in
George Eliot's honour. The selection offered in this volume will
stand as a lasting memorial to her greatness. Limitation of space
prevented the inclusion of papers by Henry Alley, Anthony Brad
ley, James Caron, Mary Coney, Linda Costic, Colin Henderson,
David Leon Higdon, Clinton Machann, Meri-Jane R. Mintz, Vic
tor Neufeldt, Ellin Ringler, William Scheuerle, andj. Don Vann.
In acknowledging the part played by the University of Puget
Sound as host of this Conference, the editors wish particularly to
note the moneys contributed by the Enrichment Committee of
the University, the Endowment Enrichment Fund of the Univer
sity's Board of Trustees, and the Washington Commission for the
Humanities. A Faculty Research Grant helped with the prepara
tion of the manuscript of this volume. The editors wish also to
express their gratitude for the extraordinary personal support of
University President Philip M. Phibbs and his wife Gwen. And
finally they offer warm thanks for the invaluable technical and re
search assistance rendered throughout the Conference and in the
preparation of this manuscript by the Conference Secretary Eliza
beth R. Danz.
GoRDON S. HAIGHT
RosEMARY T. VANARSDEL
Vll
Notes on the Contributors
IAN ADAM is the author of George Eliot, editor of This Particular
Web: Essays on Middlemarch, and of Ariel: A Review of
International English Literature. He has published numerous
articles on George Eliot and is Professor of English at the Uni
versity of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
RUTH apROBERTS, author of Trollope, Artist and Moralist, and the
chapter 'Trollope' in Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research, has
published widely in scholarly journals. She is Professor of English,
University of California, Riverside.
MIRIAM H. BERLIN has served as Associate and now Visitor at the
Russian Research Center, Harvard University. For many years
she was a member of the History Department, Wellesley College,
and is now Lecturer for the Radcliffe Seminars Program and the
Harvard University Slavic Department. She has been Research
Director for the Study Committee on Universities and Human
Rights of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
ELIZABETH A. DANIELS, a member of the Board of Directors of theRe
search Society for Victorian Periodicals, is the author of Jessie
White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary, as well as many
scholarly articles on Victorian literature. She is Professor of
English at Vassar College.
GORDON s. HAIGHT, Emily Sanford Professor Emeritus of English
Literature at Yale University, is the editor of The George Eliot
Letters and author of George Eliot: A Biography, which received
the James Tait Black prize, the Heinemann award of the Royal
Society of Literature, the award of the American Academy and
National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Van Wyck Brooks
award. He edited The Mill on the Floss, the first volume of The
Clarendon Edition of the Novels of George Eliot, of which he is
Vlll
Notes on the Contributors lX
general editor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
ROBERT B. HEILMAN, Professor Emeritus of English at the University
of Washington, widely known as a critic and scholar, has pub
lished numerous articles and books on Shakespeare, the drama,
and the nature of tragedy, including Tragedy and Melodrama:
Versions of Existence and The Ways of the World: Comedy and
Society, which won the Christian Gauss Prize of Phi Beta Kappa
in 1979. He has edited works by Swift, Conrad, Hardy, and
George Eliot, and published articles on Austen, Hardy, Trollope,
Waugh, and Welty.
JOHN F. HULcooP, editor of The Selected Poems of Phyllis Webb,
1954-65, has also published Three Ring Circus Songs, as well as
many articles in scholarly journals. His poetry has appeared in all
the major Canadian journals, and he is Professor of English at the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
JACOB KORG, Professor of English at the University of Washington,
specialises in Victorian and modern literature, and is an authority
on the works of George Gissing. He is the author of George
Gissing: A Critical Biography, and has written on Dickens, Mere
dith, Browning, Hopkins and other Victorians. His recent book,
Language in Modern Literature, is a study of twentieth-century
experimental writing.
JULIET McMASTER is the author of Thackeray: The Major Novels,
Jane Austen on Love, and Trollope's Palliser Novels: Theme and
Pattern, and co-author with Rowland McMaster of The Novel
from Sterne to james. She is Professor of English at the University
of Alberta, and has recently been elected Fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada.
IRA BRUCE NADEL, co-editor and contributor to Victorian Artists and
the City (1980), combines interests in Victorian prose and prose
fiction with a special interest in biography of the Victorian
period. He is widely published in journals of Victorian studies and
is Associate Professor of English at the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
X Notes on the Contributors
FLORENCE SANDLER, a native of New Zealand, is Professor of English
at the University of Puget Sound, where she combines interest in
seventeenth-century scholarship with Blake and the Victorians.
Shr has contributed to Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on
the Prose of john Milton ( ed. Lieb and Shawcross) and to
Essential Articles: George Herbert (ed. Roberts). Her work on
Dickens, Vaughan, Fuller, and Blake has appeared in numerous
scholarly journals.
ROSEMARY T. vanARSDEL, Professor of English at the University of
Puget Sound, is co-editor of Victorian Periodicals: A Guide to
Research and assistant editor of The Wellesley Index to Victorian
Periodicals, 1824-1900. Her research on Victorian periodicals has
appeared in numerous scholarly journals.
MARTHA s. VOGELER is Professor of English at California State Uni
versity, Fullerton. She has published articles on Positivism, edited
the centenary republication of Frederic Harrison's Order and
Progress, and is currently preparing a full-scale biography, Fre
deric Harrison: the Vocations of a Positivist.
JOSEPH WIESENFARTH, Professor of English at the University of Wis
consin, Madison, is the author of Henry james and the Dramatic
Analogy; The Errand of Form: An Assay ofJ ane Austen's Art,
George Eliot's Mythmaking, and George Elz"ot: A Writer's
Notebook, 1854-1879, based on a manuscript owned by the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
