Chapter Biography of Middlemarch - Study Guide by George Eliot

In 1863, Lewes and Marian moved to London. Felix Holt was finished in 1866. In 1869, she started two separate stories: one about the Vincys and Lydgate and the other dealing with Dorothea. At some point she realised the two could be successfully merged and Middlemarch was born. It was published in eight separate volumes as a serial and was extremely popular. Daniel Deronda (1876) was her last novel and shortly afterwards, in 1878, Lewes died. Marian was distraught. Yet in 1880, unconventional to the last, she married J.W. Cross, a long-standing admirer and twenty years her junior. In December of that year, aged 61, she died.

George Eliot's books seem to seek to assert the status quo and resist change because no one is more aware of the unhappy consequences of upsetting society than those who are outcasts from it. But her life was uniquely shaped by her individual morality and her books subtly encourage independent thought. Middlemarch could be considered her silent manifesto because it is partly a plea to judge each situation and person on their individual merits rather than depending upon an established pattern of thinking.