Mary Anne (Evans) Cross (1819 - 1880)

Born 22 Nov 1819 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England

Ancestors

Wife of John Walter Cross — married 6 May 1880 in St George Hanover Square, London, England

Died 22 Dec 1880 at age 61 in Chelsea, London, England

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Mary Ann (Evans) Cross - pen name George Eliot - was an English novelist, poet, journalist, and translator.

Biography

Mary (Evans) Cross is Notable.

Mary Anne Evans was born on 22 November 1819 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England to Robert Evans and his wife Christiana Pearson. ^[1] She was baptised on 29 November 1819 at Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, England. ^[2] She spelled her name differently at different times: Mary Anne was the spelling used by her father for the baptismal record and she uses this spelling in her earliest letters. Around 1857, she began to use Mary Ann. In 1859, she had changed to Marian, but she reverted to Mary Ann in 1880 after she married John Cross. Mary Ann Cross (George Eliot) appears on her memorial stone.

George Eliot

She was not considered "pretty enough" to secure an advantageous marriage - or any marriage at all - so she was educated beyond what was acceptable for a female. She also read greedily from the library at Arbury Hall, where her father was estate manager, and became aware of the divide between rich and poor (which often appeared in her books).

Her first published work was a religious poem. Through a family friend, she was exposed to Charles Hennell's "An Inquiry into the Origins of Christianity". She translated "Das Leben Jesu", a monumental task, without signing her name to the 1846 work. However, Mary Anne began to doubt the religious faith she had been brought up with. This doubt increased as she became acquainted with Charles and Cara Bray and their "Rosehill" circle of like-minded agnostic and liberal-thinking friends. Unable to believe, she conscientiously gave up religion and stopped attending church. Her father shunned her, sending the broken-hearted young dependent to live with a sister until she promised to reexamine her feelings. When he died in 1849, Mary Anne travelled to Geneva, Switzerland with her friends, the Brays.

Holly Lodge, 31 Wimbledon Park Road, London

Mary Anne, now calling herself Marian Evans, returned to London and began a career as a writer, becoming assistant editor for the radical and liberal publication The Westminster Review. Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as a translator, editor, and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny.

In 1854, the shy, respectable writer scandalized British society by sending notices to friends announcing she had entered a free "union" with George Henry Lewes, editor of The Leader. This was considered to be scandalous for the time, because he was married to Agnes (Jervis) Lewes (abt.1822-1902) and they did not hide the relationship. Evans started signing herself "Marian Lewes," and calling him "husband," in 1857.^[3] Mary Ann's brother, Isaac, refused to speak to her. George Lewes and George Eliot were shunned from polite society for the rest of his life. Even when divorce became legal in England, the circumstances were such that Lewes could not divorce Agnes.^[3]

George Eliot

Throughout her writing career, the identity of "George Eliot" was queried and discussed as a matter of curiosity. One person even pretended to be "George", and wild theories grew that "he" was really a parish priest - or even the parish priest's wife. Mary Anne Evans revealed her identity and shocked her readers while still remaining a hugely popular authoress. She had taken "George" because it was Lewes' given name, and "Eliot" because it was a "good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word." George Eliot in Cross, J. W. (ed.), (1885) ^[4]

Marian showed her radical streak by having abolitionist views, sympathising with the Unionists in the American Civil War, supporting Irish Home Rule, and female suffrage, including child custody, equality in marriage, occupations, and education.

George Lewes died in 1878,^[5] and Marian was heartbroken. It was on 31 January 1879, two months and a day after George's death, that she signed the document which legally changed her name to Mary Ann Evans Lewes.^[3] She received comfort from John Walter Cross, whom she married two years later on 6 May 1880 at St George Hanover Square parish church. Scandal ensued once again because of the age difference: she was 60 and he was 40. However, her brother Isaac began speaking to her again.

For her marriage in 1880 to John Cross two registrations can be found: one marrying John Walter Cross and Mary Ann E Lewes, and the second has John Walter Cross marrying George Eliot. ^[6] While the couple were honeymooning in Venice, John Cross, in a reported suicide attempt, jumped from the hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. He survived, and the newlyweds returned to England. They moved to a new house in Chelsea, but Mary fell ill with a throat infection.

Tomb of George Eliot

George Eliot died on 22 December 1880, aged 61. A throat infection had joined with her kidney disease to be the cause of death. ^[7]

She is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, Middlesex, England in the area reserved for political and religious dissenters and agnostics, next to George Henry Lewes. She was not buried in Westminster Abbey because of her denial of the Christian faith and her adulterous affair with Lewes. The graves of Karl Marx and her friend Herbert Spencer are nearby. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets' Corner.

Several landmarks in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named in her honour. These include The George Eliot School, Middlemarch Junior School, George Eliot Hospital (formerly Nuneaton Emergency Hospital), and George Eliot Road, in Foleshill, Coventry.

Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery, in Riversley Park, home of collection on writer George Eliot.

A statue of Eliot is in Newdegate Street, Nuneaton, and Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery has a display of artifacts related to her.

Bibliography

For complete bibliography, please see freespace page

• Novels
  • Adam Bede, 1859
  • The Mill on the Floss, 1860
  • Silas Marner, 1861
  • Romola, 1863
  • Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866
  • Middlemarch, 1871–72
  • Daniel Deronda, 1876

Sources

1. ↑ Parish Registers, Warwickshire County Record Office, archive reference DR0374/1, viewed via findmypast 6 April 21
2. ↑ "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NG15-LG8 : 19 September 2020), Mary Anne Evans, 1819.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2} Adams, Harriet F. "George Eliot's Deed: Reconciling An Outlaw Marriage." The Yale University Library Gazette, vol. 75, no. 1/2, Yale University, 2000, pp. 52–63, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40859673.
4. ↑ Cross, J. W. (ed.), (1885) George Eliot's life as related in her letters and journals, 3 vols London: William Blackwood and Sons.
5. ↑ George Lewes: England & Wales death registration: Marylebone [district], Volume 1a, Page 470, December quarter 1878, age 61
6. ↑ England & Wales marriage registration: St George Hanover Square [district], Volume 1a, Page 581, June quarter 1880, John Walter CROSS and Mary Ann E LEWES (a second registration shows John Walter CROSS and George ELIOT)
7. ↑ England & Wales death registration: Chelsea [district], Volume 1a, Page 188, December quarter 1880

See also:

• 'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell, published by The Hogarth Press, Pimlico, London in 1996. ISBN 0 7126 7450 0, includes extensive family trees. Hundreds of friends, professional connections and people in the 'Bloomsbury set' are also mentioned in the text.'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell

• George Eliot on Wikipedia
• The George Eliot Fellowship
• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20564.The_Mill_on_the_Floss#_=_
• http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian...
• https://billiongraves.com/grave/Mary-Ann-Cross/24397172