George Eliot : a critic's biography /

Hardy (English literature, emerita, Univ. of London), the author and editor of numerous books of criticism on such 19th-century authors as William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, turns again to the life and works of Eliot, n?e Mary Anne Evans, in what she calls a "critic's biography." Hardy combines an examination of Eliot's life with an analysis of the author's works. The six chapters are concerned with Eliot's family life, her travels in England and abroad, the men she loved, her acquaintances and friends, her use of images evoking illness and death, and how certain objects, words, and metaphors are repeated throughout her novels and letters. There is also a useful outline of Eliot's life and writing at the beginning of the book. Hardy's insights will be especially useful for readers very familiar with most if not all of Eliot's fiction, as the critic goes from book to book in her pursuit of the connection between biography and the creation of the works. Recommended primarily for upper-division and graduate-level academic collections as well as for very large public libraries that can afford the stiff price of the hardcover edition.-Morris Hounion, NYC Coll. of Technology Lib., CUNY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.