From Book News, Inc.
Bellringer examines the six main novels and the six shorter tales, such as Loci, offering a fresh look at Eliot (1819-1880) as a writer whose work has stimulated a radical questioning of religion, sociology, politics, economics, and history. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Book Description
This volume looks at George Eliot as inaugurator of a modern fictional world, as a provider of texts which stimulate radical questioning in religion, sociology, politics, economics and history. This volume provides in-depth comment on all her novels, placing her in the context of her period. Allan Bellringer doubts the omniscience of the George Eliot authorial voice, regards her main theme of consentenaity of development as one which problematizes unity and centrality, and examines the six main novels and six shorter tales as loci of cultural controversy which are still at the forefront of critical attention over 100 years after the death of this woman-writer. Hers was a death, which whenever it had occurred, would always have been felt as premature. Allan W. Bellringer is the author of "Henry James", also in the "Macmillan Modern Novelists" series.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

George Eliot offers a fresh look at this writer as an inaugurator of a fictional world and as a provider of texts which stimulate radical questioning in religion, sociology, politics, economics and history.

FROM THE CRITICS

BookList - Alice Joyce

In this particular study, another volume in the Macmillan's Modern Novelists series, Bellringer delves into the life and work of Mary Anne Evans, pseudonymously known as George Eliot. Setting the groundwork for a critical viewing of Eliot's fictional works, Bellringer offers an intriguing portrayal of the intellectual climate in nineteenth-century England and the importance of those freethinking individuals who formed Eliot's social circle during her formative years as a translator and reviewer. Social issues and religious questioning figured prominently in Eliot's works, and these themes are explored along with others--rural life, nature, and the densely layered meaning found in the novels "Romola" and "Daniel Deronda". Attention is also paid to the substantive political dialogue found in later works, such as the critically acclaimed "Middlemarch". A good, all-around account of Eliot's oeuvre.

Booknews