George Eliot George Eliot Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Ann or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels, including "Adam Bede" (1859), "The Mill on the Floss" (1860), "Silas Marner" (1861), "Romola" (1862–63), "Middlemarch" (1871–72), and "Daniel Deronda" (1876), most of which are set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight. Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype
Mary Ann Radcliffe (sic) New Novelist’s Pocket Magazine appeared in 1802, a collection of fictions compiled “by Mrs Mary Anne Radclife, of Wimbledon in Surrey.” Certainly Radcliffe was living in Surrey around this time. Mary Ann Radcliffe states in her memoirs that it was her intention to publish all of her books anonymously however she was coerced by her publisher into publishing under her name to benefit by the similarities of her name with that of the more famous Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe. Her later published book, "The Memoirs of Mrs. Mary Ann Radcliffe; in Familiar Letters to her Female Friend" in 1810,