My Life in Middlemarch (35 page)

I
N
chapter 8
, I am indebted to Stephen Gill’s detailed analysis of George Eliot’s Wordsworthian inheritance in
Wordsworth and the Victorians
(Clarendon Press, 2001). I referred to
The Buildings of Old Weymouth: Part Two
by Eric Ricketts (Weymouth Bookshop, 1976). Haight’s essay on Mary Garth appears in
George Eliot’s Originals and Contemporaries.
The translation of the epigraph from Victor Hugo is taken from the Norton Critical Edition of
Middlemarch,
edited by Bert G. Hornback (Norton, 2000).

I
N
the
Finale
, I refer to Stanley Fish’s
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
(Harper, 2011). Gillian Beer notes the biblical resonance of the view from Dorothea’s window in
Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction
(Ark, 1985). I gleaned the history of Shottermill from
Shottermill: Its Farms, Families and Mills, Part 2
by Greta A. Turner (John Owen Smith, 2005).

I am grateful to Daniel Zalewski, my editor at the
New Yorker,
and David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, for encouraging me
to write the essay about George Eliot that led to this book. I am grateful to Sameen Gauhar and Hannah Goldfield at the
New Yorker,
who were the fact-checkers on that essay, and to Elizabeth Pearson-Griffiths, who was the copy editor. Also at the
New Yorker
thanks go to Rhonda Sherman, Pam McCarthy, and Bruce Diones.

I have been extremely fortunate in my editors for this book, Vanessa Mobley at Crown and Bella Lacey at Granta Books, graceful and insightful readers both. Also at Crown I am grateful to my publisher, Molly Stern, as well as to Chris Brand, Miriam Chotiner-Gardner, Maureen Clark, Catherine Cullen, Luisa Francavilla, Elena Giavaldi, Min Lee, Mark McCauslin, Claire Potter, and Elizabeth Rendfleisch. Thanks go to Philip Gwyn Jones, my original publisher at Granta Books, and to Michael Heyward, my publisher at Text Publishing. At Doubleday Canada I am grateful to Lynn Henry, the publishing director, and to Kristin Cochrane. My agent, Kathy Robbins, has been indispensable. I am grateful to her, as well as to Louise Quayle, Rachelle Bergstein, and Micah Hauser at the Robbins Office.

Rhoda Feng diligently tracked down contemporary reviews of
Middlemarch,
as well as more recent articles and scholarship. I am very grateful for her assistance. Thanks also to Cathy Tempelsman and to Herman Edelman.

When several years ago I wrote to John Burton, the indefatigable chairman of the George Eliot Fellowship, asking for information about the organization’s activities, he wrote back immediately not only to tell me about an upcoming study weekend devoted to
The Mill on the Floss
but also to invite me to be a speaker at it. The invitation was irresistible, as was the prospect
of a charabanc tour of sites of George Eliot’s childhood. Subsequently John made himself available to guide me around Coventry and opened many doors for me there and in Nuneaton. I am very grateful to him, and to other members of the Fellowship and local champions of George Eliot, including Bill Adams, Kathleen Adams, Lynda Burton, Michael Harris, Barbara McKay, John Rignall, and Vivienne Wood. Mike Wastell, the general manager of the Griff House hotel and restaurant, generously showed me around his family’s home, once George Eliot’s.

Jonathan Ouvry, a great-great-grandson of George Henry Lewes, and the president of the George Eliot Fellowship, welcomed me into his home and graciously answered my many questions; thanks go to him and to his wife, Marjorie Ouvry, for their kindness and generosity. David Ouvry, another Lewes descendant, and Daphne Clarke were equally welcoming when I visited them; I am grateful to them for their warmth, hospitality, and enthusiasm about this project. Margaret Langford generously showed me around Lincoln College, Oxford, where her husband, Paul Langford, was rector until 2012; thanks go to both of them. Alana Harris, Darby Fellow in History at Lincoln, was kind enough to allow me into her rooms, once the Pattisons’. In Shottermill, Greta Turner conducted me around town and shared her encyclopedic historical knowledge. I thank Melanie and Will Pitcairn, who welcomed me into their house, once the home of Anne Gilchrist; Melanie also generously sent me further documents and contacts. Mark and Lindsey Pepper, the current owners of Cherrimans, were equally welcoming; I am grateful to them for allowing me to look out of their window and to discover the end of my book.

Many friends have contributed to this book, in various ways. I am grateful to Christian Brammer, Richard Cohen, Nick Denton, Jonathan Derbyshire, Christine Schwartz Hartley, Jane Haugh, Paul Holdengräber, Emily Jackson, Henry Phillips, Annie Piper, Elisabeth Prochnik, Carne Ross, Karmen Ross, Shari Spiegel, Benjamin Swett, Katherine Barrett Swett, and Barbara Wansbrough. My brother, Matthew Mead, and my sister-in-law, Julia Mead, have been supportive throughout.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Barbara Mead, and to my late father, Brian Mead, who died while I was halfway through writing it. My debt to them is on every page. I am grateful to my stepsons, Yona, Tzvi, and Zach, for everything they have taught me about young men, and for so much else. My son, Rafael, brightens my world; I hope he will read
Middlemarch
one day. The last word goes to my husband, George Prochnik, my own George. Without his kindness, encouragement, and inspiration, not a word of this book could have been written.

REBECCA MEAD is a staff writer for
The New Yorker
and the author of
One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding.
She lives in Brooklyn.