George Eliot - notable among Victorian novelists not only for her books but also for her personal life-story - explored through five of her fictional characters
1.Maggie Tulliver

It's sometimes said that George Eliot never wrote an autobiography because she had written her own life into her key characters.

Presenter Kathryn Hughes hears from contemporary writer Tessa Hadley and recent Eliot biographer Philip Davis about Maggie Tulliver from Mill on the Floss: how much of the story of Maggie, a clever, tempestuous girl with a rigid and less-gifted brother, growing up in the West Midlands with an adoring father, was inspired by Eliot's own upbringing?

With readings from the novel by Juliet Stevenson

Producer: Beaty Rubens Show less