Geoge Eliot - English novelist. A Christian, George Eliot studied Hebrew and showed an interest in Jewish affairs at an early age. Daniel Deronda (1874), is probably the best known "Zionist" novel. The hero, an assimilated Jew, after discovering his Jewish identity only in his 20's, leaves for Palestine to help "revive the organic center" and create a Jewish Nationalist state. Daniel Deronda influenced many of the early Zionist thinkers as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and such Hebrew writers as I. L. Peretz and P. Smolenskin.