Nineteenth century

George Eliot

1819–1880

Novelist, born Mary Ann Evans

She published as George Eliot and wrote about ordinary people with a moral attention usually reserved for kings. What do we live for is Dorothea’s neighborhood ethic, near the end of Middlemarch, after the grand plans have shrunk.

In the canon

  1. What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?Middlemarch

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