"George Eliot's extraordinary life, which produced some of the nineteenth-century's finest fiction, is explored in Kathryn Hughes' new biography. The daughter of a self-made businessman of impeccable respectability, the middle-aged Eliot was cast into social exile when she began a scandalous liaison with the married writer and scientist George Henry Lewes.

Only her burgeoning literary success allowed her to overcome society's disapproval and eventually take her proper place at the heart of London's literary elite. The territory of her novels comprised nothing less than the entire span of Victorian society. Although years of rigorous reading had given Eliot an unparalleled understanding of the intellectual debates of her day, she preferred to champion a pragmatic middle ground, where idealism is tempered by love, habit, and history."--BOOK JACKET.