Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. She also wished to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.