Examines the major novels of George Eliot (Marian Evans), probably one of the two most influential Victorian novelists (along with Charles Dickens). It sets the fiction in the philosophic, political, and cultural context of Victorian England and earlier. PRIOR TO FALL 2009: AP/EN 4577 3.00 (George Eliot) was AS/EN 4263 3.00 (Studies in Prose Fiction: George Eliot)