Mary Ann Evans was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1819. She is best known for her seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). She adopted the pen name George Eliot, partly to differentiate her work as a novelist from her already extensive work as a translator and critic, and partly so that her work would be taken seriously when writing by women was seen as a lesser, more frivolous art form. The choice of forename was also an honorific nod to her lover, George Henry Lewes. She is considered one of the preeminent writers of the Victorian era. Her novels have been described as some of the greatest in the English language. She died in London in 1880 at the age of 61.
