George Eliot, Amateur Naturalist?
George Eliot a.ka. Mary Anne Evans a.k.a. my bestie because Middlemarch: She was 19th-century lady naturalist-adjacent? She collected marine fossils ? Middlemarch is a book I re-read every five years and I didn't pick up on the natural history? Gah. I am SO late to this party. Butter my biscuit. Actually, butter my 10x magnifying loupe that I use to identify wasps . It's SWOON-TIME. According to The British Library, George Henry Lewes and Eliot were deeply involved in one another's writing and research , and "Lewes' scientific work had a tremendous effect on Eliot's writing and thought. Science informs the language and imagery of Middlemarch , and is the passion of two of its characters, the surgeon Lydgate, and the amateur naturalist Farebrother." I have had a crush on Lydgate for years. In Reading The Rocks, How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life , Eliot biographer Brenda Maddox writes, "Together the pair
