Coventry Archives

The collections at Coventry Archives focus on Mary Ann Evans’s time in Coventry and the friends she made in the city. It was these free-thinkers and radicals, known as the Rosehill Circle, that encouraged Mary Ann to write and eventually move to London where her literary career took off.

The archives hold letters from her to the Rosehill Circle as well as many first editions of her novels.

Ali Thomas and Victoria Northridge introduce the George Eliot collection at Coventry Archives and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum