The George Eliot Archive is an extensive resource for anyone studying the Victorian author George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), one of the most highly acclaimed novelists in Western literature.
ALL PUBLISHED WRITING
The Archive provides free access to everything George Eliot published and, increasingly, all her unpublished writing as well. Our section on Eliot's writings includes Blackwood's "Cabinet Edition," the standard final versions of all the novels and short stories, her complete poetry, her translations, and all her non-fiction essays. We also include the original publications for comparison research. These documents are searchable and downloadable complete texts, with no registration required.
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COMMENTARY BY CONTEMPORARIES
In the Commentary by Contemporaries section, we've collected more than 1200 public domain documents pertaining to George Eliot, including reviews of her works, early biographical studies by those who knew her, and newspaper articles that mention Eliot (or her other names, such as Mary Ann Evans, Marian Evans Lewes, and Mary Ann Cross).
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INTERACTIVE PROJECTS
Our Interactive Data section features born-digital data visualization models that provide highly detailed and organized information about aspects of George Eliot's life. For example, visitors will find a 60,000-word interactive chronology and several interactive maps to show the sites and routes of Eliot's travels to Italy as well as the places important to her in England. In the future, we would like to map Eliot's Spanish, and German travels as well.
Another born-digital project is an interactive social network visualization that displays Eliot's ties to family, friends, and business associates, including brief summaries, portraits, and an index of pertinent letters in the 9 volumes of correspondence edited by G. S. Haight.
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CORRESPONDENCE
Our long-term goal is to provide open access to all of Eliot’s journals, notebooks, and correspondence by providing manuscript images and transcriptions. We've started by digitizing two public domain collections, the 894 letters published by John Cross in 1885, and the letters to Elma Stuart, edited by her son and published in 1909. These letters are individually searchable by date, sender, and recipient. We will soon launch the transcriptions of Eliot's Journals and Notebooks, to be followed by page images as they are edited.
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IMAGE GALLERY
Our George Eliot Image Gallery includes the fist complete collection of the portraits of George Eliot created during her lifetime. These include preliminary sketches, final portraits, an authentic photograph and one that was "photoshopped" and sold as authentic. We have also created the first collection of illustrations from her works, collected over many years from rare editions. Comparing how various artists depicted the scenes and characters from Eliot's works opens opportunities for new scholarship.
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GEORGE ELIOT SCHOLARS
The Archive’s newest sister site, George Eliot Scholars is a digital commons where contributors publish their essays, articles, lectures, conference presentations, and other work on Eliot they wish to share to our non-commercial open access public repository. For the George Eliot Scholars website, we are also collecting peer-reviewed, open-access journal articles to share with the Scholars community.
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THE GEORGE ELIOT JOURNAL
The Archive’s other sister site, the George Eliot Review Online, makes all issues of the George Eliot Review from its inception in 1970 accessible on the internet for the first time. This open-access digital project, launched in December 2017, has been made possible in partnership with the journal’s UK publishers, the George Eliot Fellowship.
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ARCHIVE PROJECT TEAM
The George Eliot Archive, George Eliot Scholars digital commons and George Eliot Review Online, have been developed by Dr. Beverley Park Rilett and her small but mighty team of research assistants, first at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and now at Auburn University in Alabama, along with many, many expert consultants and contributors. Please check back frequently for updates and improvements as we continue to create resources for studying George Eliot.
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