To my astonishment, I find myself not “old,” not as we all feel at least for moments during middle age, but really old: eighty-seven-years-plus as I write this piece. It won't be finished until I am eighty-eight! That hard-to-swallow fact is what allows me this rather self-indulgent retrospective on a Victorianist career that has spanned several generations of criticism and scholarship. Perhaps, I dare to think, a look back at the arc of that career might be of interest to someone beside myself, moving as it does from the time—around Christmas 1958, when I began writing on a portable electric typewriter a dissertation on George Eliot and determinism—to this moment, when writing a dissertation on a single author seems rather risky and professionally unhelpful, especially if one tries to do it on a typewriter.

中文翻译：

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老维多利亚时代的回忆录

令我惊讶的是，我发现自己并不“老”，不像我们所有人至少在中年时的感觉，而是真的老：我写这篇文章时已经八十七岁了。我八十八岁才完成！这个难以接受的事实让我能够对跨越几代批评和学术的维多利亚时代的职业生涯进行相当自我放纵的回顾。也许，我敢想，回顾那段职业生涯的弧线可能会让我以外的人感兴趣，从 1958 年圣诞节前后开始，我开始在便携式电动打字机上写一篇关于乔治的论文。艾略特和决定论——到目前为止，当写一篇关于单一作者的论文时，似乎相当冒险并且在专业上没有帮助，尤其是如果一个人试图用打字机来做。