Eliot, George
Entry updated 4 December 2023. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK author Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), none of whose major works engage in the fantastic; her most famous novel, Middlemarch (1871-1872 4vols), is central to any study of nineteenth-century English literature. She is of sf interest for one frequently reprinted and commented-upon novelette, The Lifted Veil (July 1859 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; 2000 ebook), which focuses on various forms of ESP, including prescience (see Precognition) and Telepathy. The young protagonist's abilities, which are seen as unnatural forms of knowing, complicate his marriage. In a sidebar narrative, his wife is fatally afflicted with peritonitis; a blood transfusion, thought impossible in 1859, is attempted (see Medicine). In the end, alone, the protagonist awaits his own death from a heart attack he has already exactly perceived occurring. [JC]
Mary Ann Evans
born Nuneaton, Warwickshire: 22 November 1819
died London: 22 December 1880
works (highly selected)
- The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1999) [coll: in the publisher's Oxford World's Classics series: pb/William Powell Frith]
- The Lifted Veil (no place given: Project Gutenberg, 2000) [novelette: ebook: first appeared July 1859 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine: na/]
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