George Eliot

Having read the John Ruskin biography in OUP's VIP series I thought I'd read the one on George Eliot the female novelist, another individual with an evangelical background who rejected that upbringing. It was translating liberals like Strauss and Feuerbach that undid her along with the influence of liberal minded friends. She was considered to have lived a scandalous life in her day, though compared with other examples she was at least pretty much a serial monogamist, though never formally marrying. Rosemary Ashton doesn't mention Spurgeon, who Ruskin warmed to, to some extent. George Eliot did hear Spurgeon but was unimpressed. She wrote

"My impressions fell below the lowest judgement I ever heard passed upon him. He has the gift of a fine voice, very flexible and various; he is admirably fluent and clear in his language, and every now and then his enunciation is effective. . . . And the doctrine. It was a libel on Calvinism, that it should be presented in such a form .... It was the most superficial, grocer's back-parlour view of Calvinistic Christianity; and I was shocked to find how low the mental pitch of our society must be, judged by standard of this man's celebrity. . . .  Just now, with all Europe stirred by events, that make every conscience tremble after some great principle as a consolation and guide, it was too exasperating to sit and listen to doctrine that seemed to look no farther than the retail Christian's tea and muffins."

She is also said to have said "This Essex man drove bullock wagons through ecclesiastical aisles; his pulpit gown was a smockfrock." This article here gives more of Eliot's religious background with reference to Baptists.