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George Eliot is Born : A Chronology.

In June of 1856, Mary Anne and George moved to Tenby on the coast of South Whales. When Barbara Leigh Smith visited them in July, she remarked that the couple was very happy. At Tenby, Mary Anne began to think more and more about her childhood dream of writing fiction. She felt that she could competently write the descriptive passages of a novel, but feared that she lacked that talent to render dramatic and dialogue passages effectively. When she shared these thoughts with George, he encouraged her to try her hand at fiction writing.
In August, the Leweses moved back to London, and September 23 rd of 1856, Mary Anne began to write “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton”, which would later become a part of Scenes of Clerical Life. Despite his avowed confidence in her, George still had some doubts about Mary Anne’s ability to write fiction. Those doubts were removed when he read her Amos Barton story. Her fears were unfounded, she could write good dialogue and she could create drama to stir the emotions. Lewes sent her story to his publisher, John Blackwood, claiming it was the work of a (male) friend who wanted to remain anonymous. The story was published on New Year’s Day, 1857, less than two months after Mary Anne’s thirty-seventh birthday. Mary Anne then adopted George Eliot as her nom de plume. She later told John Cross that she chose the name because “George was Mr. Lewes’s Christian name, and Eliot was a good mouth filling, easily pronounced word”.1
In May of 1857, Mary Anne finally decided to tell her family of her marriage to George. At first, she kept the details to herself, but when pressed, she revealed that the marriage was not a legal one. Urged by Isaac, Mary Anne’s sister wrote letters renouncing Mary Anne. She was now an outcast in the eyes of her family.
After the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, there was...