Lewes had also written fiction,
and it was at his suggestion that his wife undertook story writing. Her
_Scenes of Clerical Life_ were contributed to _Blackwood's Magazine_ for
1857, and published in book form in the following year. _Adam Bede_
followed in 1859, the _Mill on the Floss_ in 1860, _Silas Marner_ in
1861, _Romola_ in 1863, _Felix Holt_ in 1866, and _Middlemarch_ in 1872.
All of these, except _Romola_, are tales of provincial and largely of
domestic life in the midland counties. _Romola_ is an historical novel,
the scene of which is Florence in the 15th century; the Florence of
Macchiavelli and of Savonarola.
George Eliot's method was very different from that of Thackeray or
Dickens. She did not crowd her canvas with the swarming life of cities.
Her figures are comparatively few, and they are selected from the
middle-class families of rural parishes or small towns, amid that
atmosphere of "fine old leisure;" whose disappearance she lamented. Her
drama is a still-life drama, intensely and profoundly inward. Character
is the stuff that she works in, and she deals with it more subtly than
Thackeray. With him the tragedy is produced by the pressure of society
and its false standards upon the individual; with her, by the malign
influence of individuals upon one another.
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