Celebrity Graveland

November 22, 1819 – December 22, 1880

What’s in a name?

Born Mary Anne Evans – but known more prominently by her pen name – George Eliot was a Victorian novelist known for her depictions of rural English life and the intertwining themes of politics and humanism. Like contemporaries Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, Eliot became very popular thanks in part to her vivid accounts of Victorian life, specifically the countryside in which her books took place.

But, her writing was probably the most Victorian thing about Mary Anne Evans (who also went by “Mary Ann” and “Marian” at various points of her life). The rest of her life was anything but the buttoned-up ideal of the time.

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March 11, 1952 – May 11, 2001

Lying on his back in a field in Austria, drunkenly staring up at the vast universe of stars above him, humorist and writer, Douglas Adams, had a thought that would change his life forever. He was traveling through Austria with a book entitled Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Europe and he suddenly thought how interesting it would be to write a similar guidebook…for the entire galaxy.

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May 05, 1818 – March 14, 1883

Love him, loathe him or just plain ignore him, it’s impossible to disregard the profound impact Karl Marx has had on the modern world. As a philosopher, economist and political theorist, his ideas of working class revolution as a means of stabilizing the corruption and imbalance he saw in capitalist society have influenced countless people – from idealistic students to full-on political rulers – over the past 150 years.

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