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George Henry Lewes (1817–1878)

Author of The Life and Works of Goethe

32+ Works 146 Members 2 Reviews

About the Author

Today Lewes is remembered primarily as the consort of George Eliot, with whom he lived---but never married---from 1854 until his death. Because he had condoned his wife Agnes's adulterous relationship with T. L. Hunt, Lewes was unable to obtain a divorce. In 1850 Agnes bore the first of four of show more Hunt's children, whom Lewes adopted as his own. Lewes was well known and respected as an intellectual, traveling in the most progressive and free-thinking society that Victorian London could offer. Always a great encourager of the somewhat retiring Eliot, he was also a prolific author in his own right, making significant contributions in philosophy and literary criticism. He was the author of one of the first books in English on the philosophy of Auguste Comte, Comte's Philosophy of Science (1853), and wrote essays on a number of topics, including Hegelian aesthetics, political economy, and popular drama. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy (1845), notable for its adherence to Thomas Carlyle's dictum that history is made up of the "biographies of great men," is devoted to the Victorian (and Comtean) notion of progressive change. The best-known literary criticism by Lewes is the excellent Life and Works of Goethe (1855), which he researched, with Eliot's assistance, in Germany in 1854--55. Outside of criticism, philosophy, and science---his last work, unfinished at his death but completed by Eliot, was the multivolume Problems of Life and Mind (1874)---Lewes's writings were not overly popular. Under the pseudonym Slingsby Lawrence, he wrote a number of plays, none of which fared well. He also wrote two novels, Ranthorpe (1847) and Rose, Blanche, and Violet (1848), neither of which were well received, although the first is an interesting example of the Bildungsroman and is written in imitation of Goethe. In the 1860s Lewes served briefly as editor for both Cornhill Magazine and Fortnightly Review. Criticism of Lewes is based primarily on his relationship with George Eliot, whose literary star considerably outshines his. His ideas on philosophy, the social sciences, and physiology have long been superseded, but, as a contributor to the vibrant intellectual milieu of his age, it is difficult to find his equal. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Includes the names: G H Lewes, GEOGE HENRY LEWES

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Works by George Henry Lewes

Ranthorpe (1974) 9 copies
Studies in Animal Life (1860) 6 copies

Associated Works

Wuthering Heights (1847) — Afterword, some editions — 51,616 copies
The Lights o' London and Other Victorian Plays (1995) — Contributor — 23 copies

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George Eliot and George Henry Lewes in Legacy Libraries (March 2022)

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$20? This is 1924 reprint of original/famous 1875 edition. Lewes, British philosopher and literary critic, chronicles the life of the German poet, dramatist, novelist, translator, scientist and musician, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a master of world literature;
 
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susangeib | Nov 2, 2023 |
George Henry Lewes presented a vision of how society might be reconstructed partially on scientific lines, with this, which summarized and partially translated the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte. Comte’s work (originally published in 1838, translated by Lewes in 1853) aims to dispel the conceptions that some had about a scientific plan for society: according to Lewes, positivism’s distinguishing feature is “the absolute predominance of the moral point of view—the rigorous subordination of the intellect to the heart” (8-9). The kinds of objections that writers like Charles Dickens had raised are dismissed when Lewes goes on to say, “The half-repugnant feeling about science, in the minds of literary men, artists, and moralists, is a natural and proper insurgence of the emotions against the domineering tendency of intellect… they reject a philosophy which speaks to them only of the Laboratory. But in Comte, Science has no such position” (9). Science, according to Comte and Lewes, is a tool used by the hands of morality to help all of humanity. The vision of scientific detachment as a force that overrides and destroys morality is argued against by the positivists.

In the new sciences of psychology and sociology, science turns its operations from the material to the realm of the human, of thoughts, of consciousness, of society. Comte calls for the same observational rigor in observing humanity as in observing stars or particles. Lewes hopes for “the study of Comparative Psychology, with a view to the clearer appreciation of our psychical condition” (213). This is important, because just as better understanding the physical universe lets us manipulate and control it, better understanding human thought lets us improve it: Lewes argues that the “foremost portion of mankind is now approaching the positive state… and now only await their general co-ordination to constitute a new social system” (328). Though Lewes later states that he finds Comte’s suggested reorganization of society “premature” (339), he still comes across as sympathetic to the general long-term reform goals of positivism.

Good observation of humans and human nature becomes key to the success or failure of positivism. If sociology and psychology do not adequately understand how human beings thinks, either individually or in large groups, then it would be impossible to reform society on a scientific basis. Lewes makes interesting reading alongside the many utopian texts of the nineteenth century, such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1888) or George Griffith’s The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (1893), as well as the ones that examine means of reformation to point out their flaws, like Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period (1882) or William Morris’s News from Nowhere, or An Epoch of Rest (1890). And then there is George Eliot’s Middlemach: A Study of Provincial Life (1871-72), which I would argue is in fact a novel with a utopian project, because it examines the ways in which the ideals of positivism do and do not work.
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Stevil2001 | Aug 13, 2013 |

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