Dickens, George Eliot and George Henry Lewes

When the Victorian journalist and critic, George Henry Lewes invited George Eliot and Charles Dickens to dinner in 1859, few imagined it would lead to one of the greatest creative exchanges in literary history.

From the non-traditional ‘marriage’ of Eliot and Lewes, to the unconventional eye Lewes cast over Dickens’ work, this book throws fresh light on the chief subject of their critical interest by looking at the complex relationships between Dickens, Eliot and Lewes. It contends that Lewes saw something in Dickens and Eliot that his contemporaries could not grasp, and traces the birth of ‘psychological realism’ as a literary device in English literature.