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GEORGE ELIOT

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GEORGE ELIOT
<p><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:windowtext'>GEORGE ELIOT </span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial; color:windowtext'><BR><BR></span><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Arial; text-transform:uppercase'>“Writing By Candlelight Is An Oppressive Prospect”</span></b><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:windowtext;text-transform:uppercase'><BR><BR></span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial; color:windowtext'>Pen name of <b>Mary Ann Evans</b> (1819-1880). Influential British novelist in the realist tradition, whose works include <i>Adam Bede</i> (1859), <i>Silas Marner</i> (1861), and her masterpiece, <i>Middlemarch</i> (1871-1872). ALS “<i>Marian Evans Lewes</i>,” 3pp, 8vo, Venice, Jun 8, 1860. With transmittal envelope. On holiday with her companion <b>George Lewes</b> (1817-1878), Eliot writes to Mrs. Bell, their housekeeper, sending news and concerning household matters. In part, “...<i>It seems to me a long while since I wrote to you from Rome—much longer, I dare say, than it seem to you, who have been leading a quiet monotonous life that leaves little trace in the mind. I hope it has been in no way an unpleasant life to you...The unfortunate letter you dispatched to Rome has not reached us, but you need be in no trouble on that account, for if, as I imagine, you observed that the letter had been previously addressed to Smith and Elder...it is probably a letter of no importance from some person who did not know Mr. Lewes’s address. I am thankful to tell you that at last Mr. Lewes seems really better for our holiday: there is no remnant of deafness...Our journey has been a continually increasing enjoyment to us both...We shall hardly manage to reach home before the end of this month...In the meantime if you have not thought of it already, will you please see that the outside Spanish blind is put up over the drawing room window. Nicholson, the builder, will be the best person to apply to...We shall be at Berne about the twentieth...Give my best love to Mrs. Congreve, and thank her for her last letter. I trust to her goodness not to demand another letter from me; for we are out of the house so continually during the day time, and I am so fatigued at night, that writing by candlelight is an oppressive prospect to me. You have never sent us a word of news about Pug!...We have seen a pair of puppies - brother and sister - here at Venice that made us long to carry them home as companions for our very slow child...The weather seems made on purpose for us...we have the pleasures of Venice in perfection - without mosquitoes, & without head-scorching in our gondola</i>...” Inlaid. Penned on thin letter paper with uneven tear along fold with attendant small paper loss in left margin of second leaf; second tear at bottom portion extends from fold into two lines of postscript with no paper loss; else in good condition. Stamped envelope also inlaid. Published in <i>The George Eliot Letters</i> ed. by Gordon S. Haight, Vol. III, pp 303-4.</span></p>