Born on this day - George Eliot

22nd November 1819

Mary Ann Evans is known more by her pseudonym George Eliot, a name she took up in the 1850s when she started to publish works of fiction. Her first novel "Adam Bede" (1859) was immediately successful. Other works followed such as "Mill on the Floss" (1860) and her masterpiece "Middlemarch" (1871-2) now regarded as one of the most important nineteenth century novels, all written with Eliot's characteristic realistic style.