Editing George Eliot (section)

=== Marriage to John Cross and death ===
[[File:Highgate Cemetery - East - George Eliot 01.jpg|thumb|upright|Eliot's grave in [[Highgate Cemetery]]]]

On 16 May 1880, eighteen months after Lewes' death, Eliot married John Walter Cross (1840–1924)<ref name="DNB" /> and again changed her name, this time to Mary Ann Cross. While the marriage courted some controversy due to the 21 year age differences, it pleased her brother Isaac that she was married in this relationship. He had broken off relations with her when she had begun to live with Lewes, and now sent congratulations. While the couple were honeymooning in [[Venice]], Cross, in a suicide attempt, jumped from the hotel balcony into the [[Grand Canal (Venice)|Grand Canal]]. He survived, and the newlyweds returned to England. They moved to a new house in Chelsea, but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the [[kidney disease]] with which she had been afflicted for several years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.<ref name=":0">{{cite web| url = http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/eliot_george.shtml| title = George Eliot
| date = 15 October 2009| access-date =30 December 2009| work=BBC History}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |chapter= George Eliot (Obituary Notice, Friday, December 24, 1880) |title= Eminent Persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times|year=1893 |publisher=Macmillan and Co. |place=London |pages=232–239 |volume= II (1876–1881)|hdl= 2027/osu.32435022453492?urlappend=%3Bseq=246}}</ref>

Due to her denial of the Christian faith and her relationship with Lewes,<ref>{{cite book |last=Henry |first=Nancy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HscXVYCfkNMC |title=The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot |date=7 April 2008 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-46968-5 |page=13 |quote=Cross soon found that because of her agnosticism and her irregular relationship with Lewes, Eliot was not entitled to the burial in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner that befitted her position as the greatest of Victorian novelists.}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{cite web |last=Barrett |first=Charlotte |date=2 July 2012 |title=George Eliot |url=http://writersinspire.org/content/george-eliot-0 |url-status=live |access-date=2 March 2025 |website=University of Oxford |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250119030031/http://writersinspire.org/content/george-eliot-0 |archive-date=19 January 2025}}</ref> Eliot was not buried in [[Westminster Abbey]]. She was instead interred in [[Highgate Cemetery]] (East), Highgate, London, in the area reserved for political and religious dissenters and agnostics, beside the love of her life, [[George Henry Lewes]].{{efn|While the biographical consensus is that Lewes and Eliot had a perfect partnership, this view has been somewhat modified by Beverley Park Rilett, who argued in 2013 and 2017 that Lewes's protective love may have amounted to coercive control.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rilett |first1=Beverley Park |title=The role of George Henry Lewes in George Eliot's career: A reconsideration |journal=George Eliot–George Henry Lewes Studies |date=2017 |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=2–34 |doi=10.5325/georelioghlstud.69.1.0002 |url=https://georgeeliotscholars.org/items/show/314 |access-date=23 August 2021}}</ref>}} The graves of [[Karl Marx]] and her friend Herbert Spencer are nearby.<ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3rd ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 14016). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.</ref> In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the [[Poets' Corner]] between [[W. H. Auden]] and [[Dylan Thomas]], with a quote from ''Scenes of Clerical Life'': "The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second something to reverence".