Aspects and Impressions

Excerpt..... Her death caused a great sensation, for she had ruled the wide and flourishing province Of English prose fiction for ten years, since the death of Dickens. Though she had a vast company of competitors, she did not suffer through that p ... Read more

Excerpt..... Her death caused a great sensation, for she had ruled the wide and flourishing province Of English prose fiction for ten years, since the death of Dickens. Though she had a vast company of competitors, she did not suffer through that period from the rivalry of one writer of her own-class. If the Brontes had lived, or Mrs. Gaskell, the case might have been different, for George Eliot had neither the passion of jane Eyre nor the perfection of Cranford, but they were gone before we lost Dickens, and so was Thackeray, who died while Romola was appearing. Charles Kingsley, whose Westward Ho! Had just preceded her first appearance, had unluckily turned into other and less congenial paths. Charles Reade, whose It is Never Too Late to Mend (1856) had been her harbinger, scarcely maintained his position as her rival. Anthony Trollope, excellent craftsman as he was, remained persistently and sensibly at a lower intellectual level. Hence the field was free for George Eliot, who, without haste or hesitation, built up Slowly such a reputation as no one in her own time could approach. Less