From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   (or better) Mary Ann Evans born (lived until 1880).   
   "English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading   
   writers of the Victorian era." (Wiki)   
   She had already published a good deal (translations, reviews, articles   
   in magazines on contemporary topics) under her birth name, before her   
   first fiction (1857); this was when she assumed her nom de plume. "She   
   wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to   
   lighthearted romances or other lighter fare not to be taken very   
   seriously."   
   But _Adam Bede_ (1859) was so successful that she was outed, and her   
   scandalous private life (living successively with two otherwise-married   
   men) became known. Still, it did her no long-term harm -- apparently   
   Queen Victoria was an avid reader of her novels.   
   "Due to her denial of the Christian faith and her relationship with   
   Lewes,[50][citation needed] Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey.   
   She was instead interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London,   
   in the area reserved for political and religious dissenters and   
   agnostics, beside the love of her life, George Henry Lewes. The graves   
   of Karl Marx and her friend Herbert Spencer are nearby."   
      
   Hm. Quite recently I came across a battered old copy of _Silas Marner_.   
   It's on top of my enormous "To Read" pile. Maybe it's time for me to   
   read Word One of George Eliot.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)