"Everyone who cares much for the largest-brained Englishwoman who has written will read this biography with interest. For popular purposes, the book is indeed all that can be desired" - Eric Robertson, The Academy (1883) "No greater writing woman than Miss Blind has passed away since the death of George Eliot In certain important points she was superior to George Eliot" -Theodore Watts-Duncan, The Athenaeum (1896) The dinner was an extremely pleasant one, but when it was over, the guest could not help expressing his regret that George Eliot himself should not have been present. "Here he is," said Lewes, introducing the quiet, low-spoken lady who had presided at table With all her mental activity she yet led an intensely emotional life, a life which must have held hidden trials for her, as in those days she was known by her friends "to weep bucketfuls of tears" This is the first full-length biography of George Eliot, published just three years after her death, by a freethinking German-Jewish émigré and proto-feminist: the first to tackle the Lewes relationship, the marriage to John Cross, and the break with religious orthodoxy. It firmly established Eliot as the deeply autobiographical novelist we now know her to be.