THE “queer little” Haslemere cottage in which George Eliot – alias Marion Evans – wrote most of her great Victorian novel Middlemarch, is on the market at £799,950.

Grade II listed Brookbank Cottage in Shottermill Road has a Haslemere Society blue plaque in recognition of its famous former resident, who was visited there by other Victorian literary greats Tennyson, Dante Gabriel and William and Christina Rossetti.

Eliot lived there temporarily in the summer of 1871, with her married lover George Henry Lewes, while their London home was being renovated. The house is listed for sale with estate agent Clarke Gammon Wellers.