The Lifted Veil

By George Eliot

Horror was my familiar.

Published the same year as her first novel, Adam Bede, this overlooked work displays the gifts for which George Eliot would become famous—gritty realism, psychological insight, and idealistic moralizing. It is unique from all her other writing, however, in that it represents the only time she ever used a first-person narrator, and it is the only time she wrote about the supernatural.

The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can’t help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing—of Eliot’s sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella’s publication). But it is easier still to read the story as the exciting and genuine precursor of a moody new form, as well as an absorbing early masterpiece of suspense.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781612192499

George Eliot

George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot’s best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.

Reviews for The Lifted Veil

[nadineeg-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Apparently this novel was not only unusual for George Elliot, but for the time. The author presents Latimer - a young man from a wealthy self-made family who is not raised to carry on the family business - that is left to his stronger and lustier older brother. Whilst in Switzerland studying in a healthy atmosphere where he is thriving, he has a clairvoyant moment that leads to a dead faint. As the blurb from the book states: Latimer, a sensitive and intellectual man, finds he has clairvoyant powers. Then he has a vision of a woman, 'pale, fatal-eyed', whom he later meets: she in Bertha Grant, his brother's fiancee. Entranced, bewildered, Latimer falls under her spell, unwilling to take heed of the warning visions which beset him. In this edition, there is an excellent essay on George Elliot and this novella's publication history. At the time of writing, the concept of being able to change your fate was little considered - fate was fate and the fact that you could see into your future or that of others was unfortunate but unchangeable. It is only is later years that the concept of changing your fate has been presented although not all novels and other media such as plays and movies allow us to get off so easily, as there is a common theme of running away from the known fate, only to reach it in another quite different manner. The Twilight Zone made much of this theme in its shows - so too Alfred Hitchcock's TV Theater plays.

[belgrade18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A novella about a troubled young man, the son and heir to a wealthy banker (or some such). A great exercise if you want to think about "the reliability of the narrator," because he's clearly mad as a hatter but doesn't know it; but it's mercifully short. George Eliot's writing is superb as usual, though the story is very odd and gets especially weird towards the end.

[rainpebble_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I did not find this to be a lovely book, but I do find that my opinion of this book remains drastically different from most L.T. readers of the book.I thought The Lifted Veil to be quite brilliant. As I read, I felt myself looking into the man's mind and found myself to be momentarily taking on his mental persona as well. I was not bored. I was not piqued. I was not grossed out. The book did not depress me nor did it make me nervous or anxious. I was nothing but a person within another person's ill mind. There was very little within the book that was literal and not simply in his mind.Yes, I thought it very different and as I said rather brilliant; much as I found Dracula when I read it.Sorry ladies and gentleen of the jury. I shall, most likely, be the only one here with this opinion. But then too, I am probably the only one here who has been on a psyche ward for depression, anxiety and panic attack as well. I cannot say if that colored my reading of this book.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

More of a short story than a novel (at only 60+ pages plus an afterwards by a modern writer), this was a fast, enjoyable read. Eliot's style and tone here reminded me of Frankenstein and a number of Poe's short stories.

[greeniezona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the only book I read on the train that I actually brought with me to read on the train. One of Melville House Books' Art of the Novella series, I was drawn to it as soon as I saw the author. I read Middlemarch a year or so back and absolutely loved it, but I hadn't yet read anything else by Eliot. As I am given to understand, this work both is and is not representative of her novel writing. It of course features her empathetic characterizations and high-minded idealism, but in this novella these traits are interwoven with supernatural suspense.

A pleasing, old-fashioned yet somehow modern page-turner, this story seems both to praise and condemn the veils of privacy that shield each person's heart and mind from any other. How much misery could be avoided if each couple perhaps knew each other a little better before committing to spend their entire lives together? And yet how much misery to know everything -- every thought and judgement and disappointment in another's mind?

Highly recommended. In fact, I have a friend who I may have to buy a copy for.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A deep dark psycho-depressive Victorian horror novella from Eliot, with a good ambiguous touch--we never know if Latimer really has the clairvoyant sight he claims, and therefore if the veil that lifts is the one between man and true sight, or madness. It's psychologically skilled on a more mundane level as well, with the treatment of a loveless cold war of a relationship between a narcissist and a histrionic--the fear of others and yet the fear of isolation. It's minor Eliot, but it's Eliot, and that means quality.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A mini-book containing a short story about a man whose life is blighted by his ability to foresee the future and read other people's thoughts.

[391_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Gorgeous short story. Really beautifully written, and an intense read.

[janeajones · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

[The Lifted Veil] is a rather anamolous novella by George Eliot as it deals with the supernatural and seems to be Eliot's foray into Gothic experimentation.Latimer, the protagonist, is a rather neurasthenic young man who becomes obsessed with Bertha Grant, his robust brother's fiancee. After his brother dies in an accident, he marries Bertha although he has a premonitory vision of their miserable life together.I found the narrator somewhat intriguing, but I don't think the other characters were at all well developed. Eliot built the suspense well, but I thought the payoff was pretty anti-climactic. Up until that point, I thought the book was very Poe-like, but Poe usually manages to "thrill" the reader in a more satisfying way. Her exploration was more philosophical than Gothic -- more interested in the horrors of a life lived outside of meaningful social contacts than creating terror or horror in her readers.