George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in rural Warwickshire, England to an upper middle-class family. While doted upon by her father and older brother, her mother, whose health was perpetually frail, insisted on sending the children to boarding school. At the time of her mother’s death, Mary Ann and her siblings were sent home; she seems to have loved fiercely from a young age, as she followed her father and brother, Isaac, around as constantly as she could. By her teenage years, feeling neglected by the men in her immediate family, the well-read and intelligent Mary Ann formed a series of friendships with intellectual couples, most of whom would invite her to live with them for a time, only to dismiss her once the scandal became unbearable. Mary Ann’s tempestuous romances with married men continued well into her twenties, which is when she began writing and editing.

Her desire to love and be loved finally met its match in George Lewes—a well-educated and eloquent society man who, although married, openly lived apart from the woman to whom he was legally married. Mary Ann and Lewes made the decision to be together in 1854, traveling abroad together in Europe as they began their life as, effectively, a married couple.