In Love with George Eliot

Book excerpt: A TLSBOOK OF THE YEAR. Who was the real George Eliot? In Love with George Eliotis a glorious debut novel which tells the compelling story of England's greatest woman novelist as you've never read it before. Marian Evans has scandalised polite society. She lives in sin with a married man, George Henry Lewes, but writes in secret under the pseudonym George Eliot. Gradually, it becomes apparent that the genius Eliot is none other than Evans, the disgraced woman. Her tremendous celebrity begins, and prior indiscretions are forgiven. But when Lewes dies, Evans finds herself in danger of shocking the world all over again. Meanwhile, from one rudderless century to another, two women compete to interpret Eliot as writer and as woman ...