Her MSS.
George Eliot was the most careful and accurate among authors. Her beautifully written manuscript, free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second-hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work’s sake, which she makes a prominent characteristic of ‘Adam Bede,’ and ‘Stradivarius.’
—— ——: ‘George Eliot,’ Blackwood’s Magazine, February, 1881.
Inscriptions on MSS.
The manuscript of ‘Adam Bede’ bears the following inscription: “To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life.”
The manuscript of ‘The Mill on the Floss’ bears the following inscription:
“To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March, 1860.”
The manuscript of ‘Romola’ bears the following inscription: