How did Charles Bray and Charles Hennell influence Mary Ann Evans’s ideas?

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Portrait drawing of George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, with wavy dark hair, lace collar, and a calm expression, based on an 1865 work by Sir Frederic William Burton. — George Eliot George Eliot, engraving derived from a chalk drawing (1865) by Sir Frederic William Burton.

Mary Ann Evans, who later became the renowned author George Eliot, underwent a significant intellectual transformation after moving to Coventry in 1841, where she met Charles Bray and his brother-in-law, Charles Hennell.1

Charles Bray, a self-taught freethinker and radical, along with the Hennell family, helped draw Evans away from her provincial upbringing and introduced her to ideas that sharply contrasted with the religious and political views of her Tory father.1

The most pivotal influence was Charles Hennell’s book, An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838), which served as the catalyst for Evans’s formal break with orthodoxy. This shift was supported by her earlier reading on the relationship between the Bible and science, which had already planted seeds of doubt. Following this transition, Evans took over the translation of D.F. Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, a work that significantly influenced English rationalism.1