Volume 26, Number 9 · May 31, 1979
Mr. Right
By Ellen Moers
The George Eliot Letters: Volume VIII: 1840-1870, Supplementary Letters Volume IX: 1871-1881, Supplementary Letters, Agenda and Corrigenda, Indexes to Volumes 1-9
edited by Gordon S. Haight
Yale University Press, Volume IX, 539 pp., $30.00
'The day seems too short for our happiness,' George Eliot writes in one of the letters included in the supplementary volumes of her correspondence, 'and,' she continues, 'we both of us feel that we have begun life afresh—with new ambition and new powers.' This seems to be an exact description of the state of affairs that resulted from the coming together of Miss Marian Evans, age thirty-five, editor of The Westminster Review, and Mr. George Henry Lewes, age thirty-seven, man of letters, in a relationship conceived of as a 'natural' marriage. Legal it could not be, since Lewes had a wife and children, and divorce was, for more than one reason, out of the question.
Review, 3286 words
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