Mary Ann Evans wrote under the pen name George Eliot. She did this so that her works would be taken seriously in Victorian England, which was still under the assumption that females were of lesser intelligence. Her novels were set in a provincial England and were known for their realism. Adam Bebe was her first novel written in 1859. The story centers around four characters in a rural town in 1799. The story contains a love triangle, an unwanted pregnancy, a child left abandoned to die and a trial. Eliot tells the story of a hard-working young carpenter and the simple country-woman he loves who has been seduced by a young squire.

George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann, or Marion, Evans (1819-1880), was the author of several novels including Silas Marner. Middlemarch is considered not only her finest work, but one of the greatest English novels of the 19th century.