CommentaryAuthor(s): Kathleen AdamsSource: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Sep., 1980), pp. 244-246Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2932982 .

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Commentary From the George Eliot Fellowship I am happy to send warm greet-

ings to readers of Nineteenth-Century Fiction at the time of the cen- tenary of George Eliot's death.

Based in Warwickshire, in the heart of England, a county which has the distinction of having produced George Eliot and Shakespeare, the Fellowship has been in existence for fifty years. It remained a small and mainly localized society until 1969, when we celebrated the 150th anni- versary of George Eliot's birth. The rather "homespun" week of events in Nuneaton, her native town, attracted attention-and members. From that time onward we have continued to expand.

It is inevitable that our members are as varied as the places where they live. Some reside in the English Midlands about which George Eliot wrote with such understanding and affection; some have a con- nection with her family (now widely spread in England and Australia); some have links with the families of George Henry Lewes or John Cross, or of other of her friends. All, however, are bound by a deep admiration of her work and a lively interest in her life.

George Eliot's readers tend to fall into two fairly distinct camps- those who value the books as superbly told stories and those who study them with academic scholarship. This difference of approach, which sometimes causes either side to be less than tolerant of the other, can be swept aside in 1980, a year of joined tributes.

The Fellowship's own centenary tributes have been in the planning pipeline for an entire decade. Eager to forestall anyone else with similar plans, we first approached Westminster Abbey in 1970 about the pos- sibility of placing a memorial in Poet's Corner in 1980. Though George Eliot's fame hardly depends on the marble stone to be placed in the floor of our national shrine, many of us felt the need to rectify an omission that had long been noticed by visitors to the Abbey. When serious negotiations began in 1974, we were taken aback at the costs involved. We doubted the ability of a society as small as ours to raise so large a sum. We need not have worried. A worldwide appeal for funds was launched in 1976, and we had reached our target barely five months later. When the fund was closed in December 1977, we had doubled it. We were overwhelmed by the generous response of George Eliot's ad-

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Commentary 245

mirers, many of them in the United States and Japan. Sure enough of our own devotion to her, we had greatly underestimated the warmth of that felt all over the world.

From 1 June, for three weeks, almost daily events-literary, musical, and social-were presented by the Fellowship in Warwickshire. Then, on 21 June the memorial stone was unveiled by Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot's eminent biographer and editor. We were delighted that he could come from America to perform the unveiling, for he is the man to whose lifetime dedication to George Eliot we all owe an im- measurable debt of gratitude.

At the ceremony, after the stone's unveiling, the greatest of her poems was read aloud. "O may I join the Choir Invisible" could not have been omitted from this supreme moment of tribute. Her influence during her own lifetime was considerable, but how much more extensive since she became one "of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence."

KATHLEEN ADAMS Coventry, England

As Kathleen Adams reports above, this has been a full year of George Eliot celebrations. For information about membership in the George Eliot Fellowship, write Mrs. K. M. Adams, Secretary, 71 Stepping Stones Road, Coventry, England CV5 8JT.

George Eliot demonstrations are continuing in other parts of the world. Conferences have been held at Tacoma, Washington, and at Leicester, England. A large international conference will be held at Rutgers University on 21-23 November. For information on this last write to the George Eliot Centennial Conference, English Department, Livingston College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 80903.

In December Nineteenth-Century Fiction will publish a special issue commemorating the death of George Eliot in 1880. U. C. Knoepflmacher and George Levine, who have generously served as guest editors for the occasion, have brought together contributions by Helen Cooper, Mar- garet Anne Doody, Elaine Showalter, G. Robert Stange, David Carroll, Joseph Butwin, Catherine Gallagher, Martha S. Vogeler, K. K. Collins, Barbara Hardy, J. Hillis Miller, and Richard Poirier.

The special issue is available from the Periodicals Department, Uni- versity of California Press, 2223 Fulton Street, Berkeley, CA 94720, for $5.00 or by subscribing to Nineteenth-Century Fiction (see inside front cover for rates). Book reviews that would normally be published in December will be held over until March.

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246 Nineteenth-Century Fiction

A Washington Irving Society has been founded this year, with Andrew Breen Myers of Fordham University as its first president. The Society invites individuals, institutions, and corporations as members. An over- seas branch is also being discussed. Inquiries for specific information should be directed to Membership Chairman, the Washington Irving Society, 150 White Plains Road, Tarrytown, NY 10591.

The Northeast Victorian Studies Association meeting at the Uni- versity of Hartford, 24-26 April, will be devoted to England in the 1880s. Proposals for papers or panels should be sent to Jane Lilienfeld, English Department, Assumption College, Worcester, MA 01609 by 1 November. Articles for a special issue of the University of Hartford Studies in Literature on the same subject should be sent to Leonard Manheim, Editor, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT 06117.

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association meeting will be held at the Newberry Library in Chicago on 1-2 May. Papers or proposals on the theme of Law, Rule, and Resistance in Victorian England should be sent to Frederick Kirchhoff, Department of English and Linguistics, Indiana-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, IN 46805 by 1 December.

Membership in the London Library in St. James Square is available for ?36 a year, with lower rates for temporary use of the library. Amer- ican scholars who are interested in membership or in learning more about the London Library may write to Stephen R. Parks, Hon. Sec- retary, 1914 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520.

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