In this Very Short Introduction, Juliette Atkinson explores the ideas feeding Eliot's fiction and looks at the literary techniques - such as narrative voice, genre, imagery, structure, and syntax - that she used to embody them. These shape her recurrent themes: the stifling nature of gossip, the hardships experienced by commonplace individuals, the duty of practising fellow-feeling and the difficulty of doing so. Atkinson argues that George Eliot was a social outcast who became a sage, through the creation of some of the most influential novels ever written in English.