The Reception of George Eliot in Europe eds. by Elinor Shaffer and Catherine Brown (review)

This volume is a valuable addition to George Eliot scholarship and to the Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe series edited by Elinor Shaffer of the University of London. In her preface to the series, Shaffer explains that her purpose is to expand the boundaries of the use of the term “critical reception” in a systematic, long-term, and large-scale way (viii). She has done just that for George Eliot. This broader picture extends our knowledge of Eliot and of George Henry Lewes by helping us understand how they were viewed in various countries throughout Europe—individually and as a couple—and how their work was received during their lives and over the years up to the present. It is stimulating and informative to have in one volume such a wide array of perspectives from such a variety of scholars from seventeen European countries. Shaffer describes George Eliot as a “cosmopolitan figure, who travelled abroad in Europe” and who “had a wide European acquaintance both of leading figures in those countries and of Britons who lived abroad, and whose later novels undertake international themes of great scope and ambition” (viii). This welcome volume definitely provides the facts we need to substantiate this view of George Eliot.

A striking but unfamiliar image of George Eliot on the front cover of the volume—a portrait by Sir Frederick William Burton provided by the British Museum—immediately captures the reader’s attention. Having an unfamiliar image of Eliot on the book is appropriate for a volume that contains so many fresh and thought-provoking insights that enhance our previous understanding of George Eliot and her work. First, it is impressive and encouraging to read erudite essays by twenty-four relatively unknown George Eliot scholars from all over Europe who have very impressive academic credentials. Second, the wide geographical coverage and the painstaking presentation of factual data make it abundantly clear that George Eliot, her work, and her thought are indeed cosmopolitan. The seventeen areas represented in the text include Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Italy, Spain, the Catalan Islands, Russia, Bulgaria, Czech Lands, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Greece. Each essay’s accompanying bibliography is itself a treasure house that introduces us to unknown or little-known critics and sources. Third, there is an extremely useful historical timeline from 1819, the year Eliot was born, through 2015. The first column lists relevant facts from the life and work of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes and includes their visits with authors and other influential people. It also lists stage and film adaptations of Eliot’s works, public readings, and even presentations on television. A second column lists the translations of Eliot’s works that appeared in each of the European countries, and a third column lists the critical texts published in each country. This thirty-two-page table is itself a valuable resource for Eliot scholars.

The introduction and twenty chapters are well-organized and extremely informative. Each essay provides specific details of how Eliot’s contemporaries in a particular country responded to her work and offers an overview of scholarly and popular responses up through the present. Each essay also describes the quantity and quality of translations of Eliot’s works published in that country and responses to Eliot’s unique intellectual, moral, historical, and literary attributes. In many ways, each chapter stands alone as a valuable analysis of the critical reception of George Eliot in one European country or area. But the cumulative effect reminds us that George Eliot was one of the best traveled of nineteenth-century British writers, that her travels play a powerful role in her writing, and that she built her reputation on her early translations of significant and controversial European texts.

These twenty-four authors share a wealth of new insights and observations about George Eliot and the impact she has had on the thinking...