2019 marks the Bicentenary of the birth of Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, in Nuneaton, England, on 22nd November, 1819.
She is regarded as one of the world’s greatest novelists.
This site will promote all events being held to celebrate this remarkable woman and her literary achievements, locally, nationally and internationally.
8-10 December 2018
This 2 day conference in December 2018 to be held in the English Language & Literature department of the University of Geneva will launch the 2019 George Eliot Bicentenary celebrations.
17 May 2019
This workshop collaborates with Glasgow Museums Resource Centre to investigate how generational identities – particularly that of the 1819 cohort – might look different when we view them through the lens of the material culture they generated and left behind.
17-19 May 2019
We have a varied program, including Kathryn Hughes, journalist and biographer, Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeny.
24-25 May 2019
This conference will focus on the lives and afterlives of Queen Victoria and George Eliot, both born in 1819 and both defining figures in our understanding of the Victorian period.
17-19 July 2019
This is a major event and will attract delegates from all over the world. Plenary speakers, Rosemary Ashton and Nancy Henry
9 March 2019
Our theme for the year is “Meet the Woman” and our opening event will let you do just that. We are honoured to have secured the renowned actress/historian Lesley Smith to present her new persona; George Eliot.
19 March 2019
“Friends of Highgate”, in, conjunction with GEF are proud to be hosting an evening when Rosemary Ashton OBE, FBA, will be talking about George Eliot’s (then know to her friends as Marian Evans) London Years.
22 March 2019
We are looking forward to sharing together our responses to 'The Mill on the Floss', the story of Maggie Tulliver growing up with her brother Tom. Although set in the Gainsborough area, the emotional heart of this novel is surely Griff, Nuneaton. Discussion led by Viv Wood.
13 April 2019
We invite you to an entertaining evening, in Duesseldorf, of readings and dramatic performance of selected extracts from George Eliot’s first published and ground-breaking fiction, Scenes of Clerical Life (1857).
28 June 2019
We are honoured to have secured the renowned actress/historian Lesley Smith to present her new persona; George Eliot. At
3-4 July 2019
‘Adam Bede’, the George Eliot novel in a new stage adaptation by Ann Thomson. Peninsula Players are pleased to present its first production.
12-13 July 2019
‘Adam Bede’, the George Eliot novel in a new stage adaptation by Ann Thomson. Peninsula Players are pleased to present its first production.
17 August 2019
Sudden Impulse perform this gothic tale of love, longing, revenge and loss performed by Sudden Impulse Theatre Company. Written for the stage by Vivienne Wood
5 October 2019
Dramatised readings from George Eliot's novels, letters, criticism and poetry
15 November 2019
We are honoured to have secured the renowned actress/historian Lesley Smith to present her new persona; George Eliot. At Blablake School.
26-30 November 2019
To mark the bi-centenary of the birth of George Eliot. Sudden Impulse Theatre Company have commissioned a brand new musical of one of her most loved works, Silas Marner.
Ongoing
Wherever you are in 2019, welcome to Weimar in 1854. Accompany Marian Evans, aka George Eliot, and George Henry Lewes during their stay in the then capital of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (later Thuringia), three exciting, well documented months so crucial for Eliot‘s personal life, and her future career as a novelist.
3 February 2019
The annual civic service held annually by the mayor of Nuneaton and Bedworth
10 May - 14 July 2019
This exhibition will reveal the woman and explore how she became George Eliot.
21-23 June 2019
This is the first of two open weekends at Astley Castle, curtesy Landmark Trust. George Eliot Fellowship is always invited to be present as Astley is an important location in “Scenes of Clerical Life”.
30 June 2019
This is an annual event which we hope will attract more attention than usual. Again, if you wish to be involved, perhaps lay a wreath, please contact us.
6 July 2019
During the course of the evening we will relate the experience to how Eliot used gypsies in her writing.
26 October 2019 - 19 January 2020
A chance to see how Eliot’s life and her works have been interpreted by artists through the years.
1 December 2019
The Fellowship hosts a luncheon every year to celebrate George Eliot’s birthday, this year we have booked the Great Hall at St Mary’s Guildhall. The Great Hall was the setting for Hetty Sorrel’s trial in George Eliot’s novel “Adam Bede”.
Sudden Impulse are an award winning theatre company from George Eliot’s North Warwickshire home town of Nuneaton. They collaborated with the George Eliot Fellowship in 2016 bringing Viv Wood’s adaptation of 'Felix Holt: The Radical' to life, a production they took to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the same year.
'Gilfil' is set at Arbury Hall. We are grateful to Lord and Lady Daventry for allowing Sudden Impulse Theatre company to perform it in the grounds of their beautiful home. Come early, bring a picnic and settle down to a gripping evening's entertainment.
Mill on the Floss, Felix Holt, Adam Bede.
Throughout the summer months Sudden Impulse will be bringing rehearsed readings of these George Eliot classics to audiences free of charge in some very special locations throughout North Warwickshire. Keep an eye on our website, visit us on Facebook, or why not follow us on Twitter.