Drawing on original manuscripts and Victorian psychological theory, this study shows that George Eliot was an author who shaped her sentences as carefully as she wanted her public to read them.

George Eliot's writing process was meticulous in all of its phases, from manuscript to published text. Each of her extensive novels has a delicately crafted syntax, for she shaped her individual sentences as carefully as she wanted her public to read them. Building on the influence of Victorian psychological theory, this book explains how George Eliot consciously created subtle shocks within her grammar-reaching out to her readers beneath the levels of character and story-in her effort to inspire sympathetic response.