In the ‘Life’ of George Eliot, John Walter Cross gave an intriguing account of Eliot’s creative method. “She told me that, in all her best writing, there was a ‘not herself’ which took possession of...

relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book...

What’s your favorite book?’ is a question that is usually only asked by children and banking identity-verification services–and favorite isn’t, anyway, the right word to describe the relationship a reader has with a particularly cherished...

Eliot was scornful of idle women readers who imagined themselves the heroines of French novels, and of self-regarding folk who saw themselves in the most admirable character in a novel, and she hoped for more...

…there are pleasures to be had from books beyond being lightly entertained. There is the pleasure of being challenged; the pleasure of feeling one’s range and capacities expanding; the pleasure of entering into an unfamiliar...

Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself;...

Some very eminent critics writing in the decades immediately after the novel’s publication felt that Eliot failed to maintain sufficient critical distance in her depiction of Ladislaw–that she fell in love with her own creation...