"'Finally, Eliot has got the biographer she deserves, namely an ardent and eloquent feminist philosopher who shows us how and why Eliot's books, rightly read, are as philosophically profound as any treatise written by a man.' - Stuart Jeffries, Observer 'Clare Carlisle's The Marriage Question is the best book I've read on George Eliot.' - John Carey, Sunday Times 'Eloquent and original . [Carlisle] combines a biographer's eye for stories with a philosopher's nose for questions. Masterly and enriching. The deal historian [of marriage] will need great tact and an impious curiosity. Carlisle has both.' - James Wood, New Yorker 'In this thrilling book, the academic philosopher Clare Carlisle explores the novelist's interrogation of ""the double life"", meaning not only Eliot's own 25 years of unsanctioned coupledom with Lewes, but also the difficult love relationships she unleashed on her heroines.

Carlisle speaks of wanting to employ biography as philosophical inquiry and here she succeeds magnificently. With great skill and delicacy she has filleted details from Eliot's own life, read closely into her wonderful novels and, most importantly, considered the wider philosophical background in which she was operating.' - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian ".