John Bayley
The Florence Nightingale of Fiction
Selections from George Eliot's Letters
By Gordon S Haight
Yale University Press 585pp £25 order from our bookshop
In May 1860 George Eliot wrote to Major Blackwood, proprietor with his brother of the famous magazine, commenting on a review in The Times of The Mill on the Floss, just published. The reviewer, E S Dallas, the author of one of the best and currently most neglected Victorian books on critical theory, The Gay Science, praised the novel warmly but made disparaging comments on some of the characters in passing, which upset their creator. ‘So far as my own feeling and intention are concerned, no one class of person or form of character is held up to reprobation or to exclusive admiration. Tom is painted with as much love and pity as Maggie…’
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