What was the real name of the author George Eliot?

What was the real name of the author George Eliot? The answer is Mary Ann Evans.

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist born in Warwickshire in 1819. She adopted a male-sounding name partly to ensure that her serious fiction would be judged on its merits in a literary culture where women writers were often stereotyped or patronised.

Before writing novels, Evans worked as a journalist, translator, and editor of the Westminster Review. Her first major novel, Adam Bede, appeared in 1859 and quickly made “George Eliot” a celebrated literary identity. She later wrote The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda.

The name “Mary Ann” can appear in variant forms, including Mary Anne or Marian, because Evans used different spellings at different points in her life. That variation does not change the quiz answer. Another common mix-up is confusing George Eliot with the male novelist George Eliot; George Eliot was a woman, and the name was a pseudonym rather than her birth name.