The Ethical Vision of George Eliot is one of the first monographs devoted entirely to the ethical thought of George Eliot, a profoundly significant, influential figure not only in nineteenth-century English and European literature, nineteenth-century women’s writing, the history of the novel, and Victorian intellectual culture, but also in the field of literary ethics. Ethics are a predominant theme in Eliot’s fictional and non-fictional writings. Her ethical insights and ideas are a defining element of her greatness as an artist and novelist. Through meticulous close readings of Eliot’s fiction, essays, and letters, The Ethical Vision of George Eliot presents an original, complex definition of her ethical vision as she developed it over the course of her career. It examines major novels like Adam Bede, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda; many of Eliot’s most significant essays; and devotes two entire chapters to Eliot’s final book Impressions of Theophrastus Such, an idiosyncratic collection of character sketches that Eliot scholars have heretofore generally overlooked or ignored. The Ethical Vision of George Eliot demonstrates that Eliot defined her ethical vision alternately in terms of revealing and strengthening a fundamental human communion that links us to other persons, however different and remote from ourselves; and in terms of recognizing and respecting the otherness of other persons, and of the universe more generally, from ourselves. Over the course of her career, Eliot increasingly transitions from the former towards the latter imperative, but she also considerably complicates her conception of otherness, and of what it means to be ethically responsible to it.

Excerpt from The Ethics of George Eliot's Works Herewith is offered to the American public a reprint of "the pretty little book" to which George Eliot refers in a letter addressed to Mr. John Blackwood, of the Edinburgh publishing firm, on the 28th of June, 1879. Here are her words: "Thank you for sending me the pretty little book. I am deeply touched by the account of its origin, and I remember well everything you said to me of Mr. Brown in old days when he was still with you. I had only cut a very little way into the volume when a friend came and carried it off; but my eyes had already been arrested by some remarks on the character of Harold Transome (pp. 28-30), which seemed to me more penetrating and finely felt than almost anything I have read in the way of printed comment on my own writing. When my friend brings back the volume I shall read it reverentially, and most probably with a sense of being usefully admonished. For praise and sympathy arouse much more self-suspicion and sense of short-coming than all the blame and depreciation of all the Pepins." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.