george eliot: the emergent self

1975, 1st Edition. Dust jacket has some wear to head of spine. Neat inscription previous owner on front free endpaper. Additional images available upon request.

Although George Eliot was unable to write even when youth, talent and opportunity were present, creativity did not wither within her, but stayed alive and mysteriously protected, so when it finally burst forth it did so with as much vigor and freshness as if she had been in the spring of her life. An exploration of the causes of her long period of frustration and her release from it provides considerable insight into her career as a writer; it also illumines.... the unfolding self-its power and uncanny strategy, whether or not it leads, as in her instance, to the tangible production of genius. Now that  there is the advantage of hindsight, it is easy to think-as did Henry James- that in one way or another, in the long run her novels would have got themselves written...... "Yet the more one is aware of the depth and power of her frustration, the more remarkable it seems that she triumphed over it. That triumph was not achieved by one leap into fiction writing: rather, hers was a gradual and tenuous history, which might well have been fatally interrupted at any time during the periode of her writing. For hers was not the self to come forward in an instant, like Athena, full armed. There were latent powers to be awakened, and their awakening came as a result of the subtly continuing, modulating force of her writing present upon her buried past.