The works collected in this volume provide an illuminating introduction to Georg
e Eliot's incisive views on religion, art and science, and the nature and purpos
e of fiction. Essays such as 'Evangelical Teaching' show her rejecting her earli
er religious beliefs, while 'Woman in France' questions conventional ideas about
female virtues and marriage, and 'Notes on Form in Art' sets out theories of id
ealism and realism that she developed further in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.
It also includes selections from Eliot's translations of works by Strauss and F
euerbach that challenged many ideas about Christianity; excerpts from her poems;
and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe and Browning. Wonderfully
rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the intellectual developm
ent of this most challenging and rewarding of writers.
