“The Lifted Veil” George Eliot (Pseudonym of Mary Ann (or
Marian) Evans) English novelist, short story writer, essayist,
poet, editor, and translator. The following entry presents
criticism of Eliot's short story “The Lifted Veil” (1859) from
1910 through 2003. Regarded as a Gothic tale combined with
elements of science fiction, “The Lifted Veil” chronicles the
story of a doomed man endowed with extrasensory perception.
Although he has foreseen his own murder, he is unable to change
his fate. Initially rejected by Eliot's publisher, John
Blackwood, “The Lifted Veil” was eventually published in
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1859. Blackwood considered the
story to be inferior to Eliot's novel Adam Bede, which was
published five months earlier, and for that reason he convinced
Eliot to publish the story anonymously. Overlooked at the time
of its publication, in recent years “The Lifted Veil” has
garnered increasing critical attention. Plot and Major
Characters Told from a first-person perspective, “The Lifte