Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively "Mary Anne" or "Marian"), known by her pen name
George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the
Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including
Adam Bede (1859),
The Mill on the Floss (1860),
Silas Marner (1861),
Middlemarch (1871–72), and
Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their
realism and psychological insight.