Scope and arrangement
This is a synthetic collection consisting of a manuscript, correspondence by and about the author, a diary for 1879, notebooks, and financial documents. The collection includes a holograph diary for 1879; a notebook labeled "Miscellanies" on spine and "Quotations, Latin, English & Greek - and Hebrew Matters" on front cover; and a holograph notebook of notes for volume IV of George Henry Lewes's "Problems of life and mind." It also includes Lewes's literary receipt book with entries in his hand for April, 1841-1878 followed by a summary of his income, 1855-1878 in George Eliot's hand, and Lewes's record of investments and dividends at end. Included are two receipts acknowledging payment of royalties from Harper's for the author's work. The collection's single manuscript is Algernon Charles Swinburne's manuscript draft on the deaths of Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot. The correspondence, dating from 1841 to 1879, includes letters from the author to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, John Chapman, Sir Richard Owen, Bessie Parkes, Frances Trollope and others, as well as a copy of a typed letter to George Smith. Also included are letters relating to the author, dating from 1859 to 1880, between various correspondents including William Allingham, D. J. O'Donaghue, John Fiske, Mary Fisk Green Stoughton, Benjamin Jowett, Harriet Martineau, and others. There are letters to Eliot from C. H. Bray, Emily Ellsworth Ford, Sara Hennell, Calvin Ellis Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others, dating from [1859?] to 1880.
The George Eliot collection of papers are arranged in three series: