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 Evans Thorne Mary Evans Thorne Mary Evans Thorne (c. 1740/1-after 1813) was one of the first women to have a leadership role in the Methodist movement in the United States. She was appointed class leader, a layperson who performed pastoral duties, by Joseph Pilmore in Philadelphia in about 1770. Mary Evans was born around 1740-41 in Bristol, Bucks County, Pennsylvania to Thomas and Diana Evans. Her parents, who were of Welsh heritage, moved to New Bern, North Carolina, where Thomas died. Her mother remarried James Mills in 1767. Evans joined the Baptists in North Carolina when she was 23 and married James