The Story of Avis

The Story of Avis

Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Boston: Osgood & Co., 1877

HathiTrust

1877

George Eliot to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, London, 13 November 1877. "Sincere thanks for your kind letter and for the copy of Avis which has been duly sent to me. I have read several chapters, and shall continue to read the work with interest, but as I shall read it slowly, taking it up at odd moments, I cannot defer all sign of my sympathy till I reach the end. What you say of broken health as a hindrance and a severe demand for submission to doing the smaller thing where you had hoped to do the greater, goes straight to my heart. This sort of renunciation or resignation enters more or less into the life of every ardent soul, for its vision and longing must always be larger than its achievement, but when the limit is fixed by bodily weakness or malaise the trial is incomparably hard. I know something of this." GEL 6: 417

Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Story of Avis, George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57045

https://georgeeliotarchive.org/files/original/177090e4b0aa1e8cb9d467eed9ddd4f8.pdf