Its objects are to gather together admirers of the novelist and to encourage the collection of books, manuscripts, letters, portraits and other articles associated with her for public display as well as to observe her birthday each year. The Fellowship's annual programme includes a programme of Readings from George Eliot's novels, essays and letters, wreath-laying ceremonies in the George Eliot Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton and in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, a George Eliot Memorial Lecture and a Birthday Luncheon in November on the Sunday nearest to her birthday. Other events which vary from year to year are also included. The George Eliot Fellowship was founded in Nuneaton in 1930 and has a membership of approximately 600 in 20 different countries. Ordinary and life membership is open to individuals.
Ordinary membership is open to corporate bodies such as libraries, schools and universities.
In 1980, to mark the centenary of George Eliot's death, the Fellowship, together with George Eliot admirers all over the world, placed a memorial stone in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. In 1986, as a result of a public appeal, they were responsible for the erection of a bronze statue of George Eliot by the Warwickshire sculptor, John Letts, in the centre of her native Nuneaton. The statue was unveiled by the President of the George Eliot Fellowship, Jonathan Ouvry, who is the great, great grandson of George Henry Lewes with whom George Eliot lived for twenty four years, and without whose loving encouragement there would probably have been no George Eliot. The patron of the Fellowship is the Right Hon. the Viscount Daventry, of Arbury Hall near Nuneaton. The Newdegate family have lived at Arbury Hall for over 400 years and it was at Arbury, while Robert Evans was employed as Agent for the Arbury Estate, that Mary Ann Evans, later to become world famous as George Eliot, was born.