Novels and Tales.
George Eliot’s Annotated Copy
[Eliot, George]. Goethe. Novels and Tales. Elective Affinities; The Sorrows of Werther; German Emigrants; The Good Women; and a Nouvelette. London: Bell & Daldy, 1871.
8vo.; library and bookstore stamps on pastedowns; bookseller’s description neatly pasted opposite the title page; five pages of ads in the front, five in the rear; green cloth, elaborately stamped in blind; new spine with cloth labels. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Later edition. George Eliot’s copy, signed by her with her real name on the half-title: Marianne Evans. With several pencil lines in the margins, and with her notes on page 113 and 167 as follows. The first, in chapter 18 of part one of Elected Affinities, she writes, “What does Goethe mean here?”, indicating a speech by “Edward”:
My fate and Ottilie’s cannot be divided, and shall not be shipwrecked. Look at this glass; our initials are engraved upon it. A gay reveller flung it into the air, that no one should drink of it more. It was to fall on the rock and be dashed to pieces; but it did not fall; it was caught. At a high price I bought it back, and now I drink out of it daily—to convince myself that the connection between us cannot be broken; that destiny has decided.
On page 167, in chapter 7 of part two of that same volume, she writes, “Alas that this is so little understood,” referencing a passage that begins on page 166 and continues to the following page. After parsing out the differences in educational needs of girls by class, she evaluates the value of an education on a girl who has been prepared, to whatever degree, with a high education, only to be consigned to marriage; in part:
Many thinks, with which we furnish our scholars at the school, do not please me; because experience tells me of how little service they are likely to be in after-life. How much is not at once stripped off; how much is not at once committed to oblivion, as soon as they young lady finds herself in the position of a housewife or a mother!
In the meantime, since I have devoted myself to this occupation, I cannot be entertain a devout hope that one day, with the companionship of some faithful helpmate, I may succeed in cultivating purely in my pupils that, and that only, which they will require when they pass out into the field of independent activity and self-reliance; that I may be able to say to myself, in this sense is their education completed. Another education there is indeed which will again speedily recommence, and work on well nigh through all the years of our life—the education which circumstances will give us, if we do not give it to ourselves.
A well-traveled copy: with a discrete label on the front pastedown announcing the “Librairie Galignani, English and American books and periodicals, 224 Rue de Rivoli, Paris,” and a stamp at the foot of that page (and of the rear pastedown as well), “Property Oklahoma Baptist University Library.”
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