Middlemarch

Author(s): George Eliot, George Eliot

Classics

George Eliot's Victorian masterpiece: a magnificent portrait of a provincial town and its inhabitants  George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building of railroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientific approaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behind respectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are played out in the complexly portrayed central characters of the novel—the idealistic Dorothea Brooke; the ambitious Dr. Lydgate; the spendthrift Fred Vincy; and the steadfast Mary Garth. The appearance of two outsiders further disrupts the town’s equilibrium—Will Ladislaw, the spirited nephew of Dorothea’s husband, the Rev. Edward Casaubon, and the sinister John Raffles, who threatens to expose the hidden past of one of the town’s elite. Middlemarch displays George Eliot’s clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge. This Penguin Classics edition uses the second edition of 1874 and features an introduction and notes by Eliot-biographer Rosemary Ashton. In her introduction, Ashton discusses themes of social change in Middlemarch, and examines the novel as an imaginative embodiment of Eliot's humanist beliefs.For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.   


Product Information

Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Shortlisted for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003.

Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator and later editor of the Westminster Review. In 1857, she published SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of 'George Eliot', including THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, MIDDLEMARCH, and DANIEL DERONDA. Rosemary Ashton is Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London.

General Fields

  • : 9780141439549
  • : Penguin UK
  • : Penguin
  • : 1.3
  • : May 2003
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 36mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : George Eliot, George Eliot
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 823/.8
  • : very good
  • : BL2003006662
  • : notes