Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is a vel by George Eliot. Her third vel, it was first published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, in its strong realism it represents one of Eliot's most sophisticated treatments of her attitude to religion. Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880), better kwn by her pen name George Eliot, was an English velist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven vels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871-72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and kwn for their realism and psychological insight.