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Dinitia Smith

Biography

Dinitia Smith

Dinitia Smith is the author of four novels, including THE ILLUSIONIST, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, and she has won a number of awards for her writing, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Until recently, Smith was a cultural correspondent for the New York Times specializing in literature and the arts. She has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and elsewhere. She lives in New York.

Dinitia Smith

Books by Dinitia Smith

by Dinitia Smith - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Dinitia Smith’s novel recounts George Eliot’s honeymoon in Venice following her marriage to a handsome young man 20 years her junior. When she agreed to marry John Walter Cross, Eliot was recovering from the death of George Henry Lewes, her beloved companion of 26 years. Eliot was bereft: left at the age of 60 to contemplate profound questions about her physical decline, her fading appeal and the prospect of loneliness. In her youth, Mary Ann Evans --- who would later be known as George Eliot --- was a country girl, considered too plain to marry, so she educated herself in order to secure a livelihood.