Eliot, George: - Born Mary Ann Evans on November 22, 1819, in Nuneaton, England, George Eliot was a pioneering novelist, poet, and journalist. Despite little formal schooling, she had access to the Arbury Hall library through her father's work, fueling her intellectual growth. This early exposure to literature and philosophy shaped her future writing.In 1851, Evans moved to London and became assistant editor of the Westminster Review, a major intellectual journal. She formed a partnership with critic George Henry Lewes, living with him despite social conventions. To ensure her fiction was taken seriously, she adopted the pen name George Eliot.Her novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Middlemarch (1871-72), are praised for their realism and psychological depth. She explored rural life, human relationships, and moral struggles with great insight. Eliot died on December 22, 1880, leaving a lasting mark on Victorian literature.