Note 2 to Chapter 4 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
The importance to George Eliot's childhood of such illustrated books as the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Defoe's Satan's Devices, Pug's Tour through Europe, the Keepsake, and The Vicar of Wakefield is suggested by passages in Adam Bede (14:211, 51:317-19), The Mill on the Floss (1, 3:21-23; I, 4:37, 40; IV, 3:22), and Letters (IV, 354). Reproductions of works by Overbeck, Canaletto, Gavarni, Retzsch, Delaroche, Kaulbach, and Titian are mentioned in, respectively, "Janet's Repentance" (11:170), "The Lifted Veil" (1:289), Daniel Deronda (18: 295, 37:271), and Letters (I, 206; II, 454-55; V, 8). In Daniel Deronda Mrs. Meyrick's front parlour contains engravings from Titian, Durer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Rembrandt, and Reynolds (20:312-13).
Last modified 20 September 2000