HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0046 5/10/00 "HARDY AND GEORGE ELIOT" =================================================== Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 10:03:47 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Hardy and Eliot I am currently reading _Daniel Deronda_ George Eliot's last novel published in 1876. As its setting is rural Wessex I wondered if she had read _Far >From the Madding Crowd_ in which Hardy first revived the ancient name Wessex two years earlier. Or could the name have gained popular acceptance rapidly enough to have been in contemporary usage quite apart from Hardy's novel? I would be grateful for any enlightenment. Betty Cortus hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu ========== Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 19:55:55 +0100 From: Birgit Plietzsch Subject: Re: Hardy and Eliot As far as I am aware she only uses the word "Wessex" in the first book of _Daniel Deronda_, which apparently she had finished by the end of April 1875. I don't know whether she had read _Far from the Madding Crowd_, but according to Frederick Karl in _George Eliot: A Biography_ (1995) the novel began to take shape in Eliot's mind after June 1873. Eliot, just as Hardy at that time, was in contact with Leslie Stephen. I wonder, if she had not read Hardy's novel, whether Stephen could have been the source for her using Wessex in _Daniel Deronda_? Does anybody know the reason for her not using "Wessex" in subsequent books of the novel, or have I over read possible occurrences? Best wishes, Birgit ========== From: "Alan Shelston" Subject: Re: Hardy and Eliot Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 19:27:04 +0100 Dear Betty, Some years ago I published a note in the Thomas Hardy Journal (Vol 7, No 2, 1992) on FFMC and Daniel Deronda in which I pointed out that the question that opens DD - Was she beautiful or not beautiful? - directly echoes a similar question asked about Bathsheba in Hardy's novel. I don't think that proves anything, but it's an interesting verbal coincidence. Alan Shelston ========== Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 10:20:40 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Hardy and Eliot Thank you Alan and Birgit for your responses to my question about Eliot's use of the name Wessex in _Daniel Deronda_. I haven't read all that far into the novel yet Birgit. I will be on the lookout for any mention of the name after Book One, but you are probably right. If _DD_ was in the planning stage so early the influence of _FFMC_ does seem a little less likely. And then the fact that Eliot and Hardy were both working with Leslie Stephen around the same time could make that link a possiblity. Betty Cortus ========== From: Tessness@aol.com Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 15:15:14 EDT Subject: Re: Hardy and Eliot << the question that opens DD - Was she beautiful or not beautiful? - directly echoes a similar question asked about Bathsheba in Hardy's novel. >> And about Scarlett in the very first line of _Gone With the Wind_. :-) ==========