Eliot died of kidney disease in the same year of her marriage, 1880.

Lewes died in 1878 and after this Eliot married John Walter Cross, again causing controversy because Cross was 20 years younger than she was. Middlemarch was published in instalments between 1871-72, and Eliot’s last novel, Daniel Deronda, was published in 1876. Middlemarch is George Eliots masterpiece.

Nearly twenty-five thousand copies were sold at once, and it raised George Eliot to the rank of the first living novelist of England. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midland town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. This novel, Middlemarch regarded by many as her masterpiece, was published in eight parts - the first on 1st December, 1871, and the last in December 1872. It first appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 18. Eliot published her first short story at the age of 37 and her first novel, Adam Bede, two years later in 1859. Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by the English author Mary Anne Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. This arrangement was the source of significant scandal at the time. Lewes was in an open marriage, and he and Eliot soon became a couple, traveling to Germany together as a “honeymoon” and living as husband and wife, despite the fact that Lewes never divorced his previous wife. She spent time living alone in Geneva before moving to London, where she worked as the editor of a progressive literary journal named The Westminster Review. She began translating works of German theology into English and publishing short reviews in periodicals. As a young woman she became socially involved with a group of agnostics and political radicals. After this point she continued to read widely, the results of which are palpable in her writing, which is intellectually sophisticated and filled with references to a diverse array of knowledge. She received an unusually extensive education for a girl at the time, although only up until the age of 16. At its center are the beautiful and inquisitive Dorothea Brooke and the ambitious young doctor Tertius Lydgate, who both have to abandon their idealist views when faced with the reality of daily life. George Eliot was the daughter of an estate manager in Warwickshire. George Eliot’s influential novel Middlemarch is, according to its subtitle, a study of provincial life.

Middlemarch by George Eliot