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Joan Bennett's George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art (CUP, 1948) Seventy Years On
Joan Bennett's critical study of the novels of George Eliot was the first full length work of criticism published by Cambridge University Press in 1948 under the simple eponymous title George Eliot. In 1966 a revised edition of the book was brought out in its present incarnation with the decorative appellation Her Mind and Her Art added to the original title. It was the only available critical work recommended and prescribed in the syllabus for our study and appreciation of the novels of George Eliot in our post-graduate English course in Indian Universities. In our intellectual development and formative years the book remained an indispensible guidebook for our critical assessment of the novels of George Eliot. This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the publication of such a landmark book, at least from the point of view of Indian students who took up English language and literature as their main course of academic study. Therefore it may be appropriate to seize this occasion as an opportunity to record our youthful impressions and commemorate the achievement of a remarkable book with which we made our first acquaintance as students with the novels of...