Eliot, whose non-pen-name was Mary Ann Evans, lived for decades with her partner, whose open marriage meant that when his wife had a baby with a different man, he was fine with it (and supported the baby). “Lewes’s legal wife went on to have three more children with her lover, all of whom Evans and Lewes supported (along with Lewes’s three sons) through their writing, editing and translating. Their urgent need for money was partly what prompted Lewes to encourage Evans to try her hand at writing fiction at the age of 37.” How does that life experience turn into Dorothea’s terrible mistake with Casaubon? Read on.