People gathered around the George Eliot Obelisk in glorious weather, to lay wreaths and pay tribute to George Eliot.
The final speaker was John Burton, chairman of the George Eliot Fellowship since 2006 and author of several books on local history.
The first of the afternoon speakers was Valerie Fehlbaum, an Oxford graduate and former lecturer at the University of Geneva. Her knowledge of Geneva and Durade made her talk particularly insighful.
The second speaker was Joanne Shattock, Emertius Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester. Her talk concerned Margaret Oliphant and John Blackwood.
The first speaker was by Jane Robinson, Senior Associate of Somerville College, Oxford. Her talk was based on her latest book 'Trailblazer' a biography of Barbara Bodichon.
Council members chose a selection of readings from George Eliot novels concerning marriages and relationships.
The Fellowship joined together with the Bedworth Society to celebrate the life of Denis Baylis, who sadly passed away in 2022
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Members of the George Eliot Fellowship will be used to reading about this plan which has filled Newsletter space since 2012, and might even now seem a bit tedious.
Subcategories
Essay Prize
Every year the Fellowship invites entries for the £500 Essay Prize. It is awarded for a previously unpublished paper on George Eliot’s life or work.
The winning essay will be published in the George Eliot Review and on this website. The author will also receive two years’ honorary membership of the Fellowship.
The competition is open to all, but may be of particular interest to graduate students. Essays should not normally exceed 5,000 words, and should be typed (or printed out) in double spacing on one side of A4 paper, leaving margins of approximately 3.5cm. They should follow the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) conventions, with single quotation marks for quotations, and endnotes rather than footnotes for references. After the first full reference to a work in an endnote, subsequent references to that work should be given in a shorter form in brackets in the text, so that endnotes are kept to a minimum.
Alternatively, contributors may use either the author/date system or a list of Works Cited with references to those works given in brackets in the text.
Submissions should be accompanied by an abstract of about 100 words and sent as an email attachment to one of the editors: either Dr John Rignall at J.M.Rignall@warwick.ac.uk or Dr Tonny van den Broek at provowallis@icloud.com. The deadline for all submissions is the middle of December; the winning essay will be announced by the end of the following January.
The George Eliot Fellowship will appoint a panel of judges which will include a member of the Editorial Board of the George Eliot Review. The decision of the panel will be final.
