George Henry Lewes, consort of George Eliot, biographer of Robespierre and Goethe, novelist, editor, and critic, was also a scientist and philosopher. An intellectual figure of great importance on the Victorian scene, he has never before received adequate modern scholarly appreciation. In this book Hock Guan Tjoa not only reconstructs Lewes’ theory of criticism and his social and political opinions but also evaluates his contributions to Darwinian science both as original thinker and as popularizer. With skillful discrimination, moreover, Mr. Tjoa has extracted from Lewes’ massive five-volume Problems of Life and Mind a clear and succinct account of Lewes’ metaphysical views. Literature and art, politics and society, science and an informed Victorian philosophy of man and the universe: the effervescent Lewes made important contributions to all. Hitherto in danger of surviving in our minds only as the lover, friend, and counselor of one of the Victorian age’s greatest novelists, Lewes emerges in Mr. Tjoa’s brief and lucid study as a thinker to be remembered for his writings as well.
HARVARD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS

Harvard Historical Monographs 70
George Henry Lewes
A Victorian Mind
Product Details
HARDCOVER
$28.50 • £24.95 • €25.95
ISBN 9780674348745
Publication Date: 01/12/1978