Not for publication: ‘promises to present the distilled understanding and insight of Professor Hardy’s lifetime engagement with George Eliot…strengths lie in the sensitive close reading that distinguishes Barbara Hardy’s criticism and in the fascinating links and echoes between life and fiction that her comprehensive knowledge of the novelist’s writing enables her to find…the proposed book would be accessible to a wide general readership and Barbara Hardy’s established reputation would be a selling point in itself.’ Readers report from John Rignall (Reader at University of Warwick and editor of The Oxford Reader’s Companion to George Eliot) ‘a genuinely interesting contribution to George Eliot scholarship by one of the leading postwar critics of Victorian fiction. The conception is bold and arresting… it reads excellently but its clarity is also vivid, effective and engaging. It wears its evident deep learning, and informed familiarity with Eliot’s world, lightlyaIt manages to integrate three achievements: to give an animated sense of Eliot’s personality as a woman, an intellectual, and a writer; it evokes successfully the milieu in which she lived and worked; and it offers genuine illumination in relation to the fiction.’ Professor Rick Rylance, Deputy Head of English Department, University of Exeter (and former Chair of Council for College and University English) Review of Thomas Hardy by NATFHE: ‘The community of critics and readers interested in Victorian studies can always expect Barbara Hardy to come up with an interesting perspective on texts we all thought had been read thoroughly into familiarityaThe beauty of this book is also that a whole range of people could read it, from A level students to Hardy specialists.