George Eliot

Name at birth: Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans

George Eliot was the masculine pen name of the writer Mary Ann Evans, one of Victorian England's leading novelists. Her first stories appeared in Blackwood's magazine, and were followed by novels including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1862). Her work was popular with critics and the public alike, and in later years her novels were especially valued for their detailed portrayals of rural English life.