George Eliot's Choice Of Romantic Partner Was A Controversial One

Men were drawn to Eliot despite her unassuming appearance. "Now in this immense ugliness dwells a most strong beauty which, in a very few minutes, sneaks forth and fascinates the mind, so that you finish, as I ended, in falling in love with her," James wrote in the same letter where he branded her "deliciously terrible." She spent more than two decades with the philosopher and critic George Lewes; after a number of liaisons and a marriage proposal, she declined. But because Lewes was already married, many people in Eliot's social circle avoided her, including her brother. Even though Lewes was unable to achieve a legal divorce from his estranged wife, he and Eliot cohabitated until his passing in 1878, and she went by the name Mrs. Marian Lewes.

She worked through her sadness following Lewes' passing by revising his works and spending time with her accountant and attorney, John Cross. Eliot, who was 60, and Cross, who was just 40, fell in love and were married in the spring of 1880 at St. George's Church in London.