Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, was born on November 22, 1819, at South Farm, Arbury Hall in Warwickshire. She was the youngest of five children. Mary Ann was afforded the privileges of private education. She enjoyed books and learning from a young age; she was introspective and quiet, much like her character Dorothea in Middlemarch, so she was a bit of an anomaly among young women of the time. Unfortunately, Mary Ann was forced to leave school at the age of 16, when her mother died in early 1836. Her father continued to indulge her love of learning, purchasing books for her and helping her to learn German and Italian.
In 1841, Mary Ann's father moved the...
