George Eliot was the pen name used by the English novelist, poet, journalist, and translator Mary Ann Evans (1819-90). She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era and the author of seven novels, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1871). Most are set in provincial England and are admired for their realism and psychological insight. Born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, she was a voracious reader as a child and boarded at three schools from the ages of 5-16, but the death of her mother in 1836 required her to return home to act as housekeeper and so she received little further formal education. However, her father's position as estate manager allowed her access to the library of Arbury Hall which greatly aided her self-education and also afforded an insight into the differences in the lives of the owners of the Hall and the workers on their estate. Religion too was a great influence in her formative years and when she and her father moved to Coventry and she gained access to a wider social circle, she was introduced to more liberal and agnostic theologies, contrasting with her low church Anglican upbringing, and at this time she made translations of works by David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach. Her friendship with wealthy manufacturer and philanthropist Charles Bray led to him publishing some of Eliot's early writings in his newspaper. After her father's death in 1849 she travelled to Switzerland and on her return in 1850 settled in London where she became assistant editor of the Westminster Review, contributing many articles and reviews. Now at the centre of literary circles, she entered a relationship with the married philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes with whom she lived until his death in 1878. Lewes encouraged her to write and in 1856 she began Scenes of Clerical Life, stories about the people of her native Warwickshire, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. Her first novel, Adam Bede, followed in 1859 and was a great success, and she continued her career as a novelist throughtout the 1860s and 70s. Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879) was her last published book and her most experimental work of fiction, taking the form of a series of literary essays by an imaginary minor scholar whose eccentric character is revealed through his writing.