I have the Penguin edition of Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings of George Eliot. So far unread but I did have a look at the introduction because it is by A. S. Byatt, an author I have a lot of time for. Byatt's novel Possession is one of my favourite books. Back in 2013 when I read it, I had not read any Eliot and was unaware of the debt owed to the writer of Middlemarch.

Byatt's introduction starts by quoting the letter William Hale White sent to the Athenaeum magazine in 1885. White was responding to John Walter Cross's Life of Eliot, who had died in 1880. She married Cross quite late in life and he was 21 years her junior. White was not impressed with Cross's work and his letter is a great summary of what made Eliot great.

From the Introduction, and quoting White's letter :

As I had the honour of living in the same house, 142, Strand, with George Eliot for about two years, between 1851 and 1854, I may perhaps be allowed to correct an impression which Mr Cross's book may possibly produce on its readers.

To put it very briefly, I think he has made her too 'respectable'. She was really one of the most sceptical, unusual creatures I ever knew, and it was this side of her character which was to me the most attractive. She told me that it was worthwhile to undertake all the labour of learning French if it resulted in nothing more than reading one book - Rousseau's Confessions. That saying was perfectly symbolical of her, and reveals more completely what she was, at any rate in 1851-4, than page after page of attempt on my part of critical analysis. I can see her now, with her hair over her shoulders, the easy chair half sideways to the fire, her feet over the arms, and a proof in her hands, in that dark room at the back of No. 142, and I confess I hardly recognise her in the pages of Mr Cross's - on many accounts - most interesting volumes. I do hope that in some future edition, or in some future work, the salt and spice will be restored to the records of George Eliot's entirely unconventional life. As the matter now stands she has not had full justice done to her, and she has been removed from the class - the great and noble church, if I may so call it - of the Insurgents, to one more genteel, but certainly not so interesting.

Not genteel, but insurgent.