Lesley Smith as George Eliot

George EliotMary Ann Evans was a Midlander by birth and a woman ahead of her time.

She was highly intelligent and a freethinker and wrote a number of novels including her most famous, Middlemarch.

She used a pen name, George Eliot, to allow her books wider appeal in Victorian society.

Her private life was scandalous, living with a married man for 24 years and being shunned by her family and society as a result but was the most successful self-made woman in the Empire.