Author's letters saved for public

George Eliot also wrote Silas Marner and Daniel Deronda

A collection of letters from author George Eliot are being made available to the public in a library in her home town of Nuneaton.

Warwickshire libraries has been given funding to get professional copies of the 60 letters reproduced.

The originals are kept in the County Record Office in Warwick.

The author of classics such as Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819 and lived in Warwickshire until 1849.

The letters mainly show domestic correspondence between the author and her friends and acquaintances.

'Very poignant'

Some of the collection are letters from George Henry Lewes, a married man she lived with for some 25 years.

Jane Sutton, Nuneaton local studies librarian, said: "Some of these letters are to his sons, one of whom died in South Africa, and these are very poignant.

"It details what he was trying to achieve there, and you see how his health deteriorates until he finally gets a letter informing him of his death."

Other letters are from Ms Eliot's second husband John Cross, whom she married shortly before her death in 1880.