num_pages: 232
description: So you thought you had read all of George Eliot? Long out of print in America, here is a challenging, provocative treat for devotees—a serious yet playful novel that explores issues of authorship, origination, and community, issues throughout her distinguished career. When George Eliot published her first work of fiction in 1857, critics speculated that the author was a man. In 1879 her last published work, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, looked back at the absurdity of that time when everyone was making guesses about the author. “Hardly any kind of false reasoning,” says her narrator Theophrastus, a middle-aged London bachelor of uncertain profession, “ is more ludicrous than this on the probabilities of origination.” Now after many years, back in print in a carefully annotated edition, this verbally brilliant fable in Eliot's final judgment on what defines moral character, how fictional characters are created, and how the author survives as his or her written text is inherited by successive generations. Impressions of Theophrastus Such marks the end of George Eliot's career and the end of her life with George Henry Lewes. In many ways this fable is a final testimony to her brilliance, and yet it is puzzling that it has traditionally been judged as inferior to her other works. It remains, on the contrary, a significant reflection of her earlier works and an experiment apart from them. In eighteen dexterous chapters, Theophrastus reflects on the habits of his contemporaries—on their tendency to romanticize past ages, the ruthless nature of scholarly debate, the mocking of traditionally revered works of art, the absurdity of decadence in art, and the justifications for Jewish and other modern nationalisms. As the character of Theophrastus emerges and coheres, the mature and accomplished George Eliot asks what has become of nineteenth-century English culture while speculating on how it might adapt and survive
language: English
title: Impressions of Theophrastus Such
titlecomplete: Impressions of Theophrastus Such
genres: Classics, Fiction, 19th Century, British Literature
ratings_count: 74
publisher: University Of Iowa Press