Mary Ann Evans, also known by her pen name as George Eliot was a prominent Victorian novelist, poet, journalist, and translator. George Eliot is viewed as one of the most important Western writers of all time, but there are aspects of her life and work that are not so well known, ranging from her literary accomplishments beyond fiction to what was seen at the time as a scandalous love life. Have you heard of this female writer with a male pen name?

Eliot decided to write under a pseudonym in 1857. She wanted to avoid the stereotype of women's writing at the time, which was considered lighthearted and frivolous. She also wanted to shield herself from scandal, as she was an unmarried woman living with a married man. She told her publisher that the pen name would serve as "a tub to throw to the whale in case of curious enquiries." It is likely that she chose the name George in tribute to her lover, George Henry Lewes. Do you know that under this pen name, nobody knew she was a female writer until she revealed it in 1859?

Eliot's lover, George Henry Lewes, was a man of many talents: dramatist, novelist, biographer, literary critic, philosopher, scientist, and editor. Lewes was a married man and couldn't obtain an official divorce, he and Eliot lived openly together until his death in 1878. It was a scandal at the time, and Eliot became estranged from many family members and friends, but it never tore the couple apart. Do you think it was brave for them to go against society's standard to prove the love and commitment they had for each other?

Eliot's greatest literary achievements were her novels, but she wrote more than fiction. Her first prominent literary work was an English translation of David Strauss' The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined; a controversial work that questioned the literal truth of biblical texts. The Earl of Shaftesbury called Eliot's translation "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell." Her novel Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language. Have you ever read any work of this unconventional author?