1819 November 22 George Eliot is born
Mary Anne Evans (known now as George Eliot) is born in the parish of Chilvers Coton in Warwickshire

1846 Eliot translates Strauss'sLife of Jesus
Mary Anne Evans' translation from the German of David Friedrich Strauss's controversial Life of Jesus is published anonymously

1851 George Eliot meets G.H Lewes
Marian Evans meets the journalist George Henry Lewes in William Jeff's bookshop in Burlington Arcade

1851 George Eliot moves to London
Marian Evans (her new spelling of her name) moves to London and gets a job as subeditor of Westminster Review

1853 Eliot and Lewes begin affair
G.H. Lewes leaves his serially unfaithful wife and begins an affair with Marian Evans

1854 Eliot and Lewes travel openly as a pair
Marian Evans and G.H. Lewes flout British convential morality by travelling openly to Germany together

1855 Eliot and Lewes pretend to be married
On their return to England, Marian Evans and G.H. Lewes pretend to be married (Lewes is unable to get a divorce)

1855   April George Eliot moves to East Sheen
Calling themselves Mr and Mrs Lewes, Marian and George move into lodgings at 7 Clarence Row in East Sheen

1855   October 3 George Eliot moves into Parkshot
Marian Evans (George Eliot) and G.H. Lewes move into lodgings at 8 Parkshot in Richmond, with Mrs Croft as their landlady

1856 George Eliot's first story is published
G.H. Lewes encourages Marian to try her hand at fiction and her first story, 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton' is successfully published

1857   October George Eliot begins Adam Bede
In the cramped sitting room that she shares as a study with Lewes, Marian Evans begins writing her first novel, Adam Bede

1858 Marian Evans chooses George Eliot as pseudonym
'Amos Barton' and two other stories are published together, as Scenes of Clerical Life, under the pseudonym George Eliot

1859   February George Eliot moves to Wandsworth
Marian Evans and G.H. Lewes move from Parkshot in Richmond to Holly Lodge in Wandsworth

1859 February Adam Bede
English author George Eliot wins fame with her first full-length novel, Adam Bede

1859   June Publisher reveals George Eliot's identify
Marian Evans reluctantly allows her publisher to admit the truth of rumours that George Eliot is Marian Evans, also known as Mrs Lewes

1860 Mill on the Floss
George Eliot publishes The Mill on the Floss, her novel about the childhood of Maggie and Tom Tulliver

1861 Silas Marner
George Eliot publishes Silas Marner, the story of a miser who loses his gold but finds happiness in adopting a child

1861 George Eliot given £10,000 advance
George Eliot is offered £10,000 to write a novel about Savonarola as a 12-part serial in the new Cornhill Magazine

1862   November George Eliot's Romola
Under the title Romola, George Eliot's story of Savonarola in Florence begins publication (completed in August 1863)

1863   November Eliot and Lewes move into Priory
George Eliot, now prosperous, moves with G.H. Lewes into the Priory, a splendid house near Regent's Park

1866 Felix Holt the Radical
George Eliot publishes Felix Holt the Radical, based on her childhood memories of the period of the great Reform Bill in 1832

1871 Middlemarch
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon

1876 Daniel Deronda
George Eliot publishes Daniel Deronda, contrasting Jewish idealism with upper-class English materialism

1878   November 30 George Eliot's partner, G.H. Lewes, dies
George Eliot is devastated by the death from cancer of G.H. Lewes, her partner of 25 years

1879 George Eliot and her banker bonded in grief
George Eliot develops an emotional bond with her investment banker, John Walter Cross, whose beloved mother died a week after Lewes

1880  May 6 George Eliot marries John Walter Cross
George Eliot marries John Walter Cross, 20 years her junior, and begins calling herself Mary Ann Cross

1880   December George Eliot moves to Cheyne Walk
George Eliot and her new husband move into a splendid new house in Cheyne Walk, beside the Thames in London

1880   December George Eliot dies
George Eliot dies, of a long-standing kidney disease, and a week later is buried beside G.H. Lewes in Highgate cemetery

1880 George Eliot's husband falls into Grand Canal
On their honeymoon in Venice, George Eliot's husband develops depression and throws himself, or falls, from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal

1980 George Eliot in Poets' Corner
100 years after her death George Eliot is given a memorial stone (denied to her in 1880) in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner