The author of My Life in Middlemarch talks about her favorite books, her journalism heroes, and working at The New Yorker. 

“Will Hannah Horvath turn to George Eliot in some forthcoming episode of “Girls”? I hope so, because there is no better book to read than “Middlemarch” if you are a young woman struggling to make sense of your inchoate ambition, or trying to figure out what you want from love, or seeking to discover what the nature of commitment is, or resisting the conventional expectations of those around you. “

For Rebecca Mead’s take on the public’s response to George Eliot’s “romantic life and her looks,” check out her essay in the New Yorker, “George Eliot’s Ugly Beauty.”

Check out Rebecca Mead’s essay in the New Yorker, “Without Austen, No Eliot,” which was was written on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Mead  discusses the surprising literary links between Austen and “Marian Evans, the formidable literary critic and translator who within a few years would herself become a writer of fiction under the pseudonym of George Eliot.” 

image taken from the New Yorker