[3] Eliot examines, among other things, the effects of religious reform and the tension between the Established and the Dissenting Churches on the clergymen and their congregations, and draws attention to various social issues, such as poverty,[3] alcoholism[4] and domestic violence.

[5] In 1856, Marian (or Mary Ann) Evans was, at the age of 36, already a renowned figure in Victorian intellectual circles, having contributed numerous articles to The Westminster Review and translated into English influential theological works by Ludwig Feuerbach and Baruch Spinoza.

[8] The adoption of a pen name also served to obscure Evans' somewhat dubious marital status (she was openly living with the married George Henry Lewes).

Public and professional curiosity was not to be suppressed, however, and on 5 February 1857 the author's 'identity' was revealed to Blackwood's: "Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito ... and accordingly I subscribe myself, best and most sympathising of editors, Yours very truly George Eliot.

Further, the scandal attached to the curate of Chilvers Coton, whose wife was an intimate friend of the young Mary Ann Evans' mother, became the story of Amos Barton.

[11][12] Likewise, "Janet's Repentance" was largely based on events that took place in Nuneaton when the young Mary Anne Evans was at school, and which were recounted to her by her friend and mentor Maria Lewis.

Mr Tryan is an idealised version of the evangelical curate John Edmund Jones, who died when Evans was aged twelve; the Dempsters seem to have been based on the lawyer J. W. Buchanan and his wife Nancy.

[14] George Eliot's intellectual journey to agnosticism had been circuitous, taking in "the easygoing Anglicanism of her family in the 1820s... the severe Calvinistic evangelicalism of her youth in the 1830s and her crisis of faith and search for a secular alternative to Christianity in the 1840s".

A pious man, but "sadly unsuited to the practice of his profession",[20] Barton attempts to ensure that his congregation remains firmly within the care of the Church of England.

Barton is new to the village and subscribes to unpopular religious ideas; not all of the congregation accept him, but he feels that it is especially important to imbue them with what he sees as orthodox Christian views.

Barton's parishioners, who were so unsympathetic to him as their minister, support him and his family in their grief: "There were men and women standing in that churchyard who had bandied vulgar jests about their pastor, and who had lightly charged him with sin, but now, when they saw him following the coffin, pale and haggard, he was consecrated anew by his great sorrow, and they looked at him with respectful pity".

We are introduced to Mr Gilfil in his capacity as the vicar of Shepperton, 'thirty years ago' (presumably the late 1820s) but the central part of the story begins in June 1788 and concerns his youth, his experiences as chaplain at Cheverel Manor and his love for Caterina Sarti.

[21] Gilfil's love for Tina is not reciprocated; she is infatuated with Captain Anthony Wybrow, nephew and heir of Sir Christopher Cheverel.

After Reverend Mr Tryan’s appointment to the chapel of ease at Paddiford Common, Milby’s residents are bitterly divided by religious differences.

One party, headed by the lawyer Robert Dempster, vigorously supports the old curate, Mr Crewe; the other is equally biased in favour of the newcomer.

"[24] Both "Mr Gilfil's Love Story" and "Janet's Repentance" are more concerned with an important female character than the clergyman, notwithstanding the title of the former.

"Amos Barton" focuses on a figure who singularly fails to live out the religion he professes, but becomes an image of Christ through his suffering and grief, and, through his trials rather than through his successes, at last wins the love of his flock.

In "Janet's Repentance", "Tryan, dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three, is even more overtly an image of Christ than Amos Barton, embodying as well as preaching the gospel of forgiveness and redemption.

"[25] Mr Gilfil in his later years also practises a doctrinally indistinct but none the less generous and kindly Christian lifestyle, demonstrating his beliefs through his actions rather than through any overt exposition of faith.

George Eliot moves beyond religious doctrine and examines how beliefs are expressed in action, drawing attention to a number of social issues.

[26] Even the quasi-Gothic melodrama of "Mr Gilfil's Love Story" raises some questions about social issues, dealing as it does with class, gender, and the aristocratic patronage of the arts.

Similarly, Sir Christopher's autocratic sway over his household and his estate is questioned: while his wishes for Maynard Gilfil and Caterina are ultimately fulfilled, it is at the expense of his dearer project, the inheritance.

[1] Popular opinion in Eliot's home town attributed the work to a Mr Joseph Liggins, who attempted ineffectually to deny the rumours, and eventually accepted the undeserved celebrity.

[35] In 1858 Charles Dickens wrote to Eliot to express his approval of the book, and was among the first to suggest that Scenes of Clerical Life might have been written by a woman.

[36]I have been so strongly affected by the two first tales in the book you have had the kindness to send me, through Messrs. Blackwood, that I hope you will excuse my writing to you to express my admiration of their extraordinary merit.

[31] Ewen detects "an obvious awkwardness in the handling of the materials of the Scenes and a tendency... to moralize", but affirms that "these stories are germinal for the George Eliot to come".