Pattison, Emilia Francis [nee Strong] (1840-1904)

Emilia Francis Strong, known during her friendship with Eliot as Mrs. Mark Pattison and later as Lady Dilke, was one of the younger women Eliot called her "spiritual daughters." Eliot wrote to her 32 times between 1869 and 1879, signing herself "Madre" as well as M. E. Lewes, and confessed in an early letter to an "unused stock of motherly tenderness" that sometimes overflowed. The two met in person when Eliot and Lewes visited the Pattisons at Lincoln College, Oxford, in the spring of 1870, and Emilia was a guest at the Priory, where Eliot invited her to tea in January 1873. Readers have long seen her unhappy first marriage to the much older Mark Pattison as the model for Dorothea and Casaubon in Middlemarch; her second husband denied the identification, but it is documented that the religious side of Dorothea was drawn from Emilia's letters.

George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org

To:
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 22 May 1869
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 23 June 1869
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 10 August 1869
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, Limpsfield, 6 November 1869
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 28 December 1869
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 21 February 1870
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 7 May 1870
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 10 May 1870
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 22 May 1870
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 15 September 1870
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 15 November 1870
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 23 April 1871
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, Shottermill, 10 June 1871
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 21 November 1871
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 5 February 1872
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 5 September 1872
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 16 December 1872
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 21 January 1873
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 2 May 1873
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 4 May 1873
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 17 November 1873
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 18 January 1874
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, Earlswood Common, 3 July 1874
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 1 December 1874
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 3 January 1875
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, Rickmansworth, 16 July 1875
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 18 October 1875
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 3 March 1876
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 18-19 February 1877
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 25 May [1877]
Charles Lee Lewes to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 10 December 1878
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, London, 20 February 1879
GE to Emilia [Mrs. Mark] Pattison, Witley, 29 May 1879

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Emilia Francis [nee Strong] Pattison (1840-1904), Pattison, Emilia Francis [nee Strong] (1840-1904), Social Network Gallery, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed November 11, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/97238