British literature best-loved works are set in the imaginary west country county of Barsetshire, including "The Warden" (1855) and "Barchester Towers" (1857). Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans (1819–80) was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially "Middlemarch" 1871-2), are important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict, that has led to comparisons with Tolstoy. George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for
Mary Ann Paton Mary Ann Paton Mary Ann Paton (1802–1864) married names including Mary Ann Wood, was a Scottish vocalist. The eldest daughter of George Paton, a writing-master at Edinburgh and amateur violin, and his wife, "née" Crawford, was born in Edinburgh in October 1802. She and her sisters received a good musical training: they were singers also, Isabella making her début at Mary Ann's benefit at Covent Garden Theatre, 1824, as Letitia Hardy, and Eliza sing at the Haymarket Theatre in 1833. Mary Ann, aged eight, appeared at public concerts as a singer, performer on the harp and pianoforte (Giovanni Battista Viotti's