George Elliot was an English novelist. A woman, (Mary Ann Evans, born 1819) she had to publish under a man's name because a Victorian woman couldn't do things like that. She used dialect in some of her stories, most about ordinary people, one of the few to do so.
I have emailed Cocojams to see where they got their information about "josey." Have to check it out because they could be right, or both of us right. Words have a habit of being used in more than one way.