The Man Who Claimed To Be George Eliot

words and music and stories

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot aka Mary Ann Evans

In 1857, when she was 37 years old , Mary Ann Evans started to use her pen name George Eliot when she published in Blackwood’s Magazine the three stories later included in “Scenes of Clerical Life”.
In a letter Evans sent to her publisher William Blackwood, at that time unaware of her true identity, she suggested using the name George Eliot in place of her own, in order to conceal the gender of the author. Eliot assured him that the pen name was necessary to employ ‘as a tub to throw to the whale in case of curious enquiries’, that is to create a diversion so as to avoid unpleasant situations.
At that time a woman’s name on a book cover led readers to assume it was a frivolous or…

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