This is a very informative look into the life of author George Eliot. It is full of details, many taken from letters and writings of those who knew her, including friends and family members.

It appears to be a well-researched and well-informed documentation of Eliot's life. The book chronicles her early life as Mary Ann Evans, as well as her life as an author, including much of the emotional upheaval that accompanied both aspects of her life.

This is a fairly interesting and well-researched account of George Eliot’s life, with particular emphasis on the events, people and places she drew on for her writing, but overall it felt somewhat dated and lacklustre. Reading about Eliot’s forebears and family to show how they merged into her work became tedious after a while, and in a sense I felt this was a book about nothing much. First published in 1973, it should perhaps have been allowed to fade into obscurity.