English literature Victorian England. George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially "Middlemarch" (1871–72), 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. George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" (1859), and "The Egoist" (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th-century but then seriously declined. An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation
Mary Ann Colclough was mistress in charge of the girls' school at Rangiora, and in 1881 was infant mistress at Papanui. It is evident that her associations with the north must have weakened, for when news of her unexpected death reached Auckland in March 1885, it aroused little comment beyond the bald statement that her passing would be regretted by many who knew her in the olden times. It is not surprising that her name and work soon faded from the New Zealand scene. (reference: Alexander Hare McLintock, C.B.E., M.A., DIP.ED. (N.Z.), PH.D.(LOND.), Parliamentary Historian, Wellington. Mary Ann Colclough Mary Ann Colclough (20