The George Eliot Archive is an extensive resource for anyone studying the Victorian author George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), one of the most highly acclaimed novelists in Western literature.

ALL PUBLISHED WRITING

The Archive provides free access to everything George Eliot published--fiction, poetry, translations, and nonfiction. Our section George Eliot's writings includes Blackwood's "Cabinet Edition," the standard final versions of all Eliot's works. We also include the original publications for comparison research. These searchable and downloadable complete texts require no registration, just a request that you credit the George Eliot Archive as your source.

READ MORE...

COMMENTARY BY CONTEMPORARIES

In the Commentary by Contemporaries section, we've collected more than 1200 public domain documents pertaining to George Eliot, including reviews of her works, early biographical studies by those who knew her, and newspaper articles that mention Eliot (or her other names, such as Mary Ann Evans, Marian Evans Lewes, and Mary Ann Cross).

READ MORE...

INTERACTIVE PROJECTS

Our Interactive Data section features born-digital data visualization models that provide highly detailed and organized information about aspects of George Eliot's life, such as a 60,000-word interactive chronology and several interactive maps to show the sites and routes of Eliot's travels to Italy as well as the places important to her in England. In the future, we will map Eliot's Spanish and German travels.

Another born-digital project is an interactive social network visualization that displays Eliot's ties to family, friends, and business associates, including brief summaries, portraits, and an index of pertinent letters in the 9 volumes of correspondence edited by G. S. Haight.

READ MORE...

CORRESPONDENCE

Our long-term goal is to provide open access to all of Eliot’s journals, notebooks, and correspondence by providing manuscript images and transcriptions. We've started by digitizing two public domain collections, the 894 letters published by John Cross in 1885, and the letters to Elma Stuart, edited by her son and published in 1909. These letters are individually searchable by date, sender, and recipient. We will soon launch the transcriptions of Eliot's Journals and Notebooks, to be followed by page images as they are edited.   

READ MORE...

IMAGE GALLERY

Our George Eliot Image Gallery includes the fist complete collection of the portraits of George Eliot created during her lifetime. These include preliminary sketches, final portraits, an authentic photograph and one that was overpainted and sold as authentic. We have also created the first collection of illustrations from her works, collected over many years from rare editions. Comparing how various artists depicted the scenes and characters from Eliot's works opens opportunities for new scholarship. 

READ MORE...

GEORGE ELIOT SCHOLARS

The Archive’s newer sister site, George Eliot Scholars is a digital commons where contributors publish their essays, articles, lectures, conference presentations, and other work on Eliot they wish to share to our non-commercial open access public repository. For the George Eliot Scholars website, we are also collecting peer-reviewed, open-access journal articles to share with the Scholars community. 

VISIT SITE

THE GEORGE ELIOT JOURNAL

The Archive’s other sister site, the George Eliot Review Online, makes all issues of the George Eliot Review from its inception in 1970 accessible on the internet for the first time. This open-access digital project, launched in December 2017, has been made possible in partnership with the journal’s UK publishers, the George Eliot Fellowship.

VISIT SITE

ARCHIVE PROJECT TEAM

The George Eliot Archive, George Eliot Scholars digital commons and George Eliot Review Onlinehave been developed by Dr. Beverley Park Rilett and her small but mighty team of research assistants at Auburn University in Alabama (and previously, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, along with many, many expert consultants and contributors. Please check back frequently for updates and improvements as we continue to create resources for studying George Eliot. 

READ MORE...

Thank you for visiting!