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 Mary Ann Radcliffe Mary Ann Radcliffe (1746 – 1818) was an important British figure in the early feminist movement. She was born Mary Ann Clayton in Nottingham, the elder daughter of a successful Anglican merchant James Clayton and his Catholic wife Sarah Blatherwick and christened at St Nicholas Nottingham on 18 June 1746. James Clayton was already 70 at the time of Mary Ann's birth and died when she was four. Mary Ann's sister Sarah predeceased him leaving Mary Ann as his heiress. Radcliffe was raised as a Catholic by her mother and educated at the Bar Convent in York.