Weekly Geeks #24

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I skipped Weekly Geeks there for awhile (I kept forgetting) but now I'm back. This one is really fun.

1. Choose a writer you like.

2. Using resources such as Wikipedia, the author’s website, whatever you can find, make a list of interesting facts about the author.

3. Post your fun facts list in your blog, maybe with a photo of the writer, a collage of his or her books, whatever you want.

4. Come sign the Mr Linky below with the url to your fun facts post.

5. As you run into (or deliberately seek out) other Weekly Geeks’ lists, add links to your post for authors you like or authors you think your readers are interested in.

George Eliot is my choice. I've always found her life and her writing interesting.

*George Eliot (1819-1880) is the pen name of Mary Ann (Mary Anne or Marion) Evans.
*Queen Victoria was a big fan of her work.
*She lived openly with a married man George Henry Lewes. (Don't you think 2 Georges would have confused things!?)
*She had a correspondence with such notables as Charles Darwin and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
*After her lover's death, she married a man 20 years her junior: John Cross. He jumped out of a window and died during their honeymoon. Yikes!
*George Eliot's grave is located in Highgate Cemetery in London

Some interesting pictures:

"She is magnificently ugly--deliciously hideous...in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her." (Henry James) Err...thanks?

George Eliot's Birthplace South Farm, Arbury, Nuneaton

This lovely statue of George Eliot by John Letts stands in Nuneaton.

Here's a list of her novels:

• Adam Bede, 1859
• The Mill on the Floss, 1860
• Silas Marner, 1861
• Romola, 1863
• Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866
• Middlemarch, 1871-72
• Daniel Deronda, 1876

While many female writers used male pen names, they discarded them once they were 'outed'. George Eliot on the other hand always went by...well, George Eliot. Her novels still carry that name. She has the name of a dude, she is most definitely a lady. So, my tribute to George is this Aerosmith video, Dude Looks Like a Lady. Just for something different. Enjoy.




More:
Neil Gaiman
Random Author Facts