Home > George Eliot's Published Writing

George Eliot's Published Writing

• Fiction by George Eliot
• Nonfiction by George Eliot
• Poetry by George Eliot
• Translations by George Eliot

Click on the above links for free access and downloadable copies of every work George Eliot published.

In this section, "George Eliot's Writings," visitors can read, search, and download any and all of the complete works of George Eliot, which are sub-divided into her fiction (novels and short stories), poetry, non-fiction reviews and essays, and her English translations of three Latin and German philosophical texts.

Why use the Cabinet Edition? Most of George Eliot's writings were published by William Blackwood and Sons in 1878 in a set known as the "Cabinet Edition," which is the standard source for citing passages. The Cabinet Edition, published two years before the author's death, represents her final revisions. 

Any essays and poems that were not included in the Cabinet Edition of George Eliot's Works are reproduced here exactly as they appeared in the pages of the original publications. For comparison purposes, we provide both the first published edition and the Cabinet edition.

John Cross's three-volume biography of George Eliot was published by Blackwood in 1885 and added to the Cabinet set; we have included those volumes in the "Commentary by Contemporaries" section. 

Fiction by George Eliot (link)

George Eliot is best known for her fiction, acclaimed critically since its publication and still widely taught in Victorian Studies courses.

Editions of Eliot’s novels are generally derived from the 1878 "Cabinet Edition" of George Eliot's Works, published in London and Edinburgh by William Blackwood and Sons. This complete collection, published two years before Eliot's death, represents the final corrected version of her works. Many subsequent editions have been published, but the foundational Cabinet Edition set remains the scholarly standard for citing Eliot’s words. 

Voyant-Tools.org For George Eliot's Cabinet Edition novels, we are adding open-source text visualization tools created by Voyant-Tools.org. Stéfan Sinclair, who passed in 2020, was principal designer and programmer of Voyant Tools. Geoffrey Rockwell, University of Alberta, is currently the project leader, supported by Andrew MacDonald and Cecily Raynor at McGill.

• Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. (Short stories, including “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” “Mr Gilfil’s Love Story,” and “Janet’s Repentance.”)
• Adam Bede. (1859) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.  (Novel)
• The Lifted Veil. (1859) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. (Novella)
• The Mill on the Floss. (1860) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. (Novel)
• Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe. (1861) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. (Novel)
• Brother Jacob. (1864) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. (Novella)
• Romola. (1863) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. (Novel)
• Felix Holt, the Radical. (1866) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.  (Novel)
• Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. (1871-72) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.  (Novel)
• Daniel Deronda. (1876) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.  (Novel)
• Impressions of Theophrastus Such. (1878) Cabinet Edition, London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878. George Eliot Archive, ed. Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.  (Fictional essays)

Nonfiction by George Eliot (link)

The most complete collection of George Eliot’s nonfiction is curated by the George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org. It includes all the essays published in earlier collections, including Charles L. Lewes's Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book (London & Edinburgh, William Blackwood & Sons, 1883), Thomas Pinney's Essays of George Eliot (Columbia UP, 1963), Pinney’s “More Leaves from GE’s Notebook” (Huntington Library Quarterly, 29.1966, 353-76), Holstrom & Lerner's George Eliot and Her Readers (1966) and Karen Pangallo's The Critical Response to George Eliot (1994). Also included are Eliot-authored essays identified in the William Baker & John C. Ross’s George Eliot: A Bibliographical History (Oak Knoll Press, 2002), in addition to the Wellesley Index and the Curran Index of Periodicals.

Eliot’s most famous essay, “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” was first published anonymously in the October, 1856 issue of the Westminster Review, just as she was beginning her own career as a serious fiction writer. Other frequently studied essays by George Eliot include “Evangelical Teachings: Dr. Cumming,” “The Natural History of German Life,” and “Worldliness and Other Worldliness: The Poet Young” in which she expresses philosophic principles that underpin her later works of fiction. All these essays and more than seventy additional reviews and articles may be read in their entirety and freely downloaded here.

Poetry by George Eliot (link)

The complete collection of George Eliot’s poetry edited by Beverley Park Rilett for the George Eliot Archive, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, includes all original publications of her works, including her earliest published poem, “Knowing that Shortly I Must Put Off this Tabernacle,” published in the 1840 edition of The Christian Observer. Here you will find all the individual poems published during her lifetime, including The Spanish Gypsy: A Poem (Cabinet Edition, Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons, 1878 (originally 1868) and How Lisa Loved the King. Fields, Osgood, 1869. The full text of the Cabinet edition of The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (Edinburgh, William Blackwood & Sons, 1878 (originally 1874) is also available here.

The long poems The Spanish Gypsy and How Lisa Loved the King were published originally in individual volumes. Shorter poems were previously available only in Bernard Paris’s “GE’s Unpublished Poetry,” Studies in Philology, 56 1959, 539-58. In 2005, The Complete Shorter Poetry of George Eliot, edited by Antonie Gerard van den Broek and William Baker (London & New York: Routledge), made these shorter poems available to scholars, but they were not collected in their public domain forms until this collection published them in 2019.

A. G. van den Broek's collection provides excellent critical introductions to the poems; while Wendy S. Williams’s George Eliot, Poetess (London & New York: Routledge, 2016) is highly recommended for its extended critical analysis of both the poetry and Eliot's role as poetess.

Translations by George Eliot (link)

Before she became fiction writer George Eliot, Marian Evans translated three works, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined by David Friedrich Strauss, The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach, and The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza. 

The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined. Translated by Marian Evans from Das Leben Jesu, by David Friedrich Strauss. London, Edward Chapman and William Hall, 1846. 3 vols. George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.

The Essence of Christianity. Translated by Marian Evans from Das Wesen des Christentums, by Ludwig Feuerbach. London, Edward Chapman and William Hall, 1854. George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.

The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza. Translated by Marian Evans from Ethica, by Benedict de Spinoza, Edited by Thomas Deegan. Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, Austria, 1981. George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org.