Robert James (Bob) Muscutt, born 1946 in Nuneaton, UK, is an independent researcher and writer with a special interest in George Eliot. With a degree from Exeter University and teacher training at Leicester University, School of education, he moved to Germany in 1975, where he still lives. The George Eliot Review (2013) published his article,“The Golden Gates are Passed.” His “A Toast to the Versatile Mr. Lewes,!” which appeared in The George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies (2013), is based on information discovered by a researcher at the Goethe Schiller Archive in Weimar in the so-called “Altenburg Album” kept by Hoffmann von Fallersleben.
He has written two neo-Victorian novels. The Defiance of Mary Ball dramatizes the true story of his great, great grandmother, Mary Ball who was publicly hanged in Coventry for the murder of her husband Thomas in 1849. His second novel, Heathen and Outcast, Scenes in the Life of George Eliot, covers GE’s life from 1840 until 1854. Muscutt has also posted various articles on aspects of George Eliot’s life on http://www.nuneatonhistory.com/, the web site of the leading Nuneaton and Bedworth local historian Peter Lee. He has visited Weimar a number of times, and in 2012 he discovered, with the help of the municipal archivist, the present location of Kaufstraße 62 A, where George Eliot and George Henry Lewes lodged for three months in 1854. This led to his successful initiative, supported by the George Eliot Fellowship, to have a memorial stone mounted onto the wall of the building which now occupies the site.
Last modified 14 May 2017r