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Early life and education

Mary Ann Evans was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, at South Farm on the Arbury Hall estate. She was the third child of Welshman Robert Evans (1773–1849), manager of the Arbury Hall estate, and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, 1788–1836), daughter of a local mill-owner. Her full siblings were: Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–1859), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who died a few days after birth in March 1821. She also had a half-brother, Robert Evans (1802–1864), and half-sister, Frances "Fanny" Evans Houghton (1805–1882), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (1780–1809). In early 1820, the family moved to a house named Griff House, between Nuneaton and Bedworth.

The young Evans was a voracious reader and obviously intelligent. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, Evans was not thought to have much chance of marriage, and this, coupled with her intelligence, led her father to invest in an education not often afforded to women. From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough, from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Misses Franklin 's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.

After age sixteen, Evans had little formal education. Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy". Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with a growing number of religious dissenters.