DANIEL DERONDA, PROFESSOR OF SPINOZA

Abstract

For almost a decade, George Eliot labored at a translation of seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza'sTractatus Theologico-PoliticusandEthics, and although completed, it never saw the light of day; it was the subject of a petty fight between the proposed publisher, Henry Bohn, and her partner, George Henry Lewes. The result was that for more than a century it was tucked away, first, presumably, in a drawer, and eventually, in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Although critics and scholars have long known that she had completed this work – references abound in letters and journal entries – it wasn't published until 1981, and even then, in an obscure imprint of the Salzburg University press. Copies of this published edition, which is limited to theEthicsand capably annotated by Thomas Deegan, are quite rare and difficult to get ahold of.