What is the real name of the author who wrote under the pseudonym 'George Eliot'?

The real name of the author who wrote under the pseudonym “George Eliot” was Mary Ann Evans.

Evans was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1819 and became one of the leading novelists of the Victorian era. She also worked as a journalist, translator, poet, and editor. Her best-known novels include “Adam Bede,” “The Mill on the Floss,” “Silas Marner,” “Middlemarch,” and “Daniel Deronda.”

She adopted the pen name George Eliot in the 1850s. Using a male pseudonym helped her work receive serious attention in a literary culture that often dismissed women writers or expected them to produce lighter, more domestic fiction. The name also separated her ambitious novels from her controversial personal life and journalistic career.

Her partnership with the literary critic George Henry Lewes lasted from 1854 until his death in 1878. Because Evans and Lewes could not legally marry, their relationship attracted public attention. Evans later married John Cross in 1880 and became Mary Ann Cross. Sources sometimes spell her name “Mary Anne” or “Marian,” but Mary Ann Evans is the standard answer to this quiz question.