Gordon S. Haight
Auteur de The Portable Victorian Reader
A propos de l'auteur
Œuvres de Gordon S. Haight
THE GEORGE ELIOT LETTERS: Vols. I-VII. 1 exemplaire
Mrs. Sigourney: The Sweet Singer of Hartford 1 exemplaire
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom légal
- Haight, Gordon Sherman
- Date de naissance
- 1901
- Date de décès
- 1985-12-28
- Lieu de sépulture
- New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- USA
- Lieu de naissance
- Muskegon, Michigan, USA
- Lieu du décès
- Woodbridge, Connecticut, USA
- Lieux de résidence
- Woodbridge, Connecticut, USA
- Études
- Yale University
- Professions
- professor
literary scholar - Organisations
- Yale University
- Prix et distinctions
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Literature, 1970)
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
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Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 9
- Aussi par
- 3
- Membres
- 337
- Popularité
- #70,620
- Évaluation
- 4.1
- Critiques
- 3
- ISBN
- 14
It was an experiment, and I don’t think I’ll repeat it. I love reading writers’ lives, but I always feel guilty if I haven’t read much of the writer’s output. Yet having this biography lie unfinished on my stack for so long while I successively read Eliot’s novels bothered me. Still, I kept up my regime until it was time to tackle Silas Marner, but then decided to finish this biography instead. Interestingly, Silas Marner is the book that was supposed to be my introduction to George Eliot in high school when I didn’t read most of the required books.
Haight’s biography was an excellent way to become acquainted with George Eliot, the person. She was one of many nineteenth-century English who rejected the idea that a belief in God is necessary for the highest standard of morality.
I was impressed by her work ethic. But she was diffident about her work, plagued by self-doubt and depression (and headaches) while working on each book. Even the slightest adverse reaction could block her. For this reason, her life partner, George Henry Lewes, insulated Eliot from criticism. Authors such as Trollope and Dickens avidly followed the reception of each installment of a new book and fine-tuned subsequent episodes. Haight is undoubtedly correct when he says that, while this practice theoretically could have benefited Eliot as well, the more likely result, given her nature, would have been not even to have the books we have.
One quibble I have with the book: the many names were hard to keep track of; after a while, I skimmed each roster of who was at dinner, concluding she knew nearly everyone worth knowing in her time. Another thing: Even the best authors let a sentence pass that would fit well in The Reader Over Your Shoulder, the Graves and Hodges classic. Haight is no exception: Lewes was researching for a book on psychology. In Vienna, an acquaintance introduced him to “Professor Meynert, Director of the Psychiatric Clinic, and Stricker, the pathologist, who exhibited interesting types of insanity.”… (plus d'informations)