In October 1851, a chance meeting in a bookshop in Piccadilly changed the course of literary history. For it was here that Mary Ann Evans, an unworldly young scholar from the Midlands, was first introduced to the love of her life, the critic and philosopher George Lewes. Encouraged and supported by Lewes, Evans went on to become the queen of literary London under her pen name, George Eliot. In nurturing Eliots talent, Lewes drew inspiration from the works of his own favourite writer, an unfashionable author of the previous generation by the name of Jane Austen. On the face of it, Austen and Eliot had little in common. Jane Austen was a genteel spinster who spent her whole life in Hampshire, painting Regency-period domestic dramas with delicate irony and unfailing charm. George Eliot, meanwhile, was a radical intellectual who lived scandalously with a married man, travelled widely in Europe and sought to document with stirring realism the social upheavals of her age. And yet, when George Eliot embarked on her career as an author in the late 1850s, the works of Jane Austen were at her side and feeding her imagination. Separated by time, circumstance and temperament, the two writers nevertheless had a vital impetus in common: to prove the value of a womans eye in a mans world. Packed with quotes from letters, diaries and the nations favourite novels, Jane Austen and George Eliot: The Lady and the Radical traces the surprising connections between two of the brightest stars of the literary firmament and, for the first time, shows how each can be illuminated by the others light. December 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austens birth. Edward Whitley first became interested in the works of Jane Austen and George Eliot as an undergraduate at Oxford. His lifelong project has been to re-read and re-examine their novels in the context of each other. Edwards previous books include The Graduates, a collection of interviews which was a Private Eye Book of the Year, and Gerald Durrells Army, a travelogue setting out the battle to save rare animals from extinction. This inspired him to launch the Whitley Awards, which funds wildlife conservation worldwide. In 2013, Edward was given the OBE for his work, and to mark the 30th anniversary of the Whitley Awards he was interviewed by Sir David Attenborough.