George Eliot
(1819-1880)

George Eliot (1819-1880)
Quarry for Middlemarch, novel published 1871–2.


Mary Ann Evans assumed the authorial identity of “George Eliot” to ensure that readers wouldn’t dismiss her writing as “Silly Novels by Women Novelists.” She began each novel with a “quarry,” a notebook in which she unearthed fictional worlds from meticulous research and character sketches. Her Quarry For Middlemarch investigates the politics and practices of Victorian (male) doctors. Her first page mines the details of 1820s medical reforms from The Lancet—a physicians’ journal still in operation.


MS Lowell 13. Bequest of Amy Lowell, 1925.