Evans had continued her studies of Italian, German, Greek, and Latin. Her first published work was a translation of Das Leben Jesu ("The Life of Jesus") by the German theologian David Strauss. She was also contributing articles and reviews to a periodical edited by her friend Charles Bray. After the death of her father in 1849, she moved to London and became assistant editor of the Westminster Review, a liberal periodical. In London, she met George Henry Lewes — a professional drama critic and man of letters, actor, and author of a history of philosophy — and fell in love with him. Lewes was married, but his wife had abandoned him. However, there was no chance of a legal divorce. In 1854, Lewes and Evans sailed together to Germany, and from that time they lived together as man and wife until his death in 1878. Their union at first made them social outcasts, but when it became apparent that this was no irresponsible affair, they were accepted by their friends and society as a married couple. After Lewes' death, Evans married, in 1880, an old friend, the American banker J. W. Cross. Soon after, on December 22, 1880, she died.
Lewes' encouragement had much to do with George Eliot's career as a writer of fiction, beginning with publication of three stories in Blackwood's Magazine. These were published together in 1858 as Scenes of Clerical Life. Adam Bede, published in 1859, was an immediate success. It was followed by The Lifted Veil in 1859, and her first great novel, The Mill on the Floss, in 1860. Silas Marner appeared in 1861. Her later works include Romola (1862-63); Felix Holt (1866); The Spanish Gypsy (1868), which is a drama in blank verse; a volume of verses, The Legend of Jubal and other Poems (1874); and a volume of essays, The Impressions of Theophrastus Such. The novel generally considered to be her masterpiece is Middlemarch, published in 1871-72.
