Jane Austen and George Eliot

In October 1851, a chance meeting in a Piccadilly bookshop changed the course of literary history. For it was here that Mary Ann Evans, an unworldly young scholar, was introduced to the love of her life, the critic George Lewes. Encouraged and supported by Lewes, Evans became the queen of literary London under her pen name, George Eliot. In nurturing Eliot's talent, Lewes drew inspiration from the works of an unfashionable author of the previous generation by the name of Jane Austen. On the face