THE MARRIAGE QUESTION

A Times Telegraph TLS and Prospect Book of the Year The best book I ve read on George Eliot John Carey Sunday TimesAn exceptional new biography that shows how George Eliot wrestled with the question of marriage in art and lifeWhen she was in her mid thirties Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel During those years she also found her life partner George Lewes writer philosopher and married father of three After eloping to Berlin in 1854 they lived together for twenty four years Eliot asked people to call her Mrs Lewes and dedicated each novel to her Husband Though they could not legally marry she felt herself initiated into the great experience of marriage this double life which helps me to feel and think with double strength The relationship scandalized her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it Living at once inside and outside marriage Eliot could experience this form of life so familiar yet also so perplexing from both sides In The Marriage Question Clare Carlisle reveals Eliot to be not only a great artist but a brilliant philosopher who probes the tensions and complexities of a shared life Through the immense ambition and da