Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-12-24
GEORGE ELIOT.
Death ofthe Famous English Novelist---A
Sketch of Her Literary and Personal Ca

DS}tssi OI Cne EaInOuS EnSi.Sn NOVcitSt---<2
Sketch cf Her Literary and Personal Ca
reer.
LONDON Dec. 23.-Mrs Cross George Eliot
the distinguished novelist, died at 1 O'Clock
last night. Her death was quiet and almost
painless. Mrs. Cross was seized with a sud
den chill which attacked her Sunday last.
She had, shortly before the attack, received
several friends who had left her in apparently
good health and spirits. The attack, however,
did not give serious cause for alarm until q
last evening. DR.. Andrew Clark then dis
covered that the pericardium was seriously af'
fected, and pronounced the case almost hope
less. She passed away quietly. On the 9Th OF
May last deceased was married as Miss Marian
Evans to John Walter Cross, of Wribridge
Surrey, merchant in the city.
In many respects Mrs. Cross was remarka
bic woman. II seems that she was born in
Warwickshire, little more than tifty-eight
years ago. Before she had published a novel
or gained any general literary reputation, she
was we'll known in London, whittier she went
in her seventeenth or eighteenth year, as a
writer for the periodical press. She contri
buted largely to the Westminster, and was at
one time its editor-a remarkable circum
stance, considering that she was then but 23
and the Review, the ablest in Great Britain
of Strauss's Life of Jesus, Q846,)
speedily followed by her second, an
English version of Feuerbach's Es
sence of Christianity. Eleven years later
a series of sketches appeared in BIackwood
under the title of 'Scenes of Clerical Life,
supposed to have been based on her OWL
experience in the home of a Church oi
England clergyman, who had substantially
adopted her. They at once attracted attention
frec hnaec nd VII nf
brought her pen-name, then used for tht
first time, into prominence which has since
steadily increased. The year following sht
published Adam Bede-she was thirty-eight al
this time--and took rank as one of the frs
of England's novelists. Adam Bede intro
duced her to the literary world at large, to tn
readers of this country as we'll as to thos
of Europe. Although her signature was gen
orally thought to be fictitious, very few outsid
| of her immediate circle-a very narrow one
had any notion of her personality. "Who i
George Eliot?" was widely discussed in Lon
| don, most persons feeling confident that he
sex was masculine. Adam Bede, it was posi-
lively asserted by numberless wiseacres, coul'
not have been written bv woman; every lin
Of it was demonstration of manhood. 1t il
| not often that famous novelist has writer
| his or her first novel SO late in life. But sh
had evidently been storing her mind for tn
| task, and had stored it richly. He secont
novel, ''The Mill OH the Floss" was pub
lished in 1869, and amply sustained her fame
silas Mariner, regarded by many as the best o
her books came two years after, and in anothe
year Romola, which, though the most artisti
of her stories, has never had the wide accept
ance of the others. By this time she wa
everywhere known to be Marian Evans, albei
no such avowal had been, or ever has been
made. Felix Holt was published in 1866
Middlemarch in 1879, and Daniel Deronda il
1876. She has issued several volumes of poetry
but they have not enhanced her fame, bein
wholly inferior to her compositions in prose
Up to the death of Geo. H. Lewes, a littl
over two years ago, she occupied the relation
of his wife, though previous marriage Q
Mr.. Lewes always cast a suspicion of illegalit
upon their relations. The Accomplishments O
the pair, however, procured them access to tn
best society of England, and their RELATIONSHIP
was never questioned. Shortly after the deaf
of Mr. Lewes Miss Evans was legally marie
to Mr.. Cross who, by her demise, is bereft of
companion who is pronounced by all VIII
knew her, as woman not only of fine schC
lastic accomplishments, but of rare domesti
! virtues. Her loss to the literary world will b
seriously felt