Product Description

George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for adult people'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16839 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 880 pages

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

Great love of humanity and depth of insight
I think that modern "mainstream" literature ought to learn something from good Nineteenth Century novels such as Middlemarch.
The richness of analysis of the human soul, the understanding of the sometimes right reasons for a wrong choice, the fascinating characters and their interactions, the wry notations on the failings of certain individuals (Casaubon who is forced to notice that his "river of passion" is in fact a very shallow torrent)and the splendid writing of George Eliot make this novel a classic to rediscover. The great expectations of Dorothea Brooke are frustrated by the conservative milieu in which she lives, where women are not expected to have political or social opinions. Her trials and errors in life are only one of the many threads in this marvelous tapestry of a novel, where men and women portrayed in marvelous authenticity interact, love and quarrel in one of the best portraits of provincial ninetheeenth century England.

One Of The Finest Novels Ever Written-A Literary Masterpiece
George Eliot, (nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans), wrote a literary masterpiece with "Middlemarch." I was forced to read this novel in school at an age when term papers and grades meant more than absorbing the riches this novel contains. I recently gave it another shot, lured to revisit 19th century English literature by rereading Jane Austen and other extraordinary authors.

Ms. Eliot created, with this book, an entire community in England in the mid-1800s and called it Middlemarch. She populated this provincial town with people of every station, local squires and their families, tradespeople, the rising middle class, the poor and destitute, ruthless and honest. She crowded them together, with their ambitions, dreams and foibles, and wove a wonderful web of plots and subplots. Ms. Eliot also used her great wit to include scathing social commentary.

The fortunes of Middlemarch are rising in this new era when machines and trains - fast, available transportation - are changing the world, the economy, the politics. Rigid social codes, the British class system, is in danger of being breached. Folks are out to make a quick shilling - anything to acquire wealth and enhance social position.

Dorothea Brooks lives in Middlemarch. She is an intelligent, sensitive young woman, who wants to dedicate her life to important endeavors. She does not want to settle for a typical marriage and family, but looks toward a more noble cause. As a woman, a professional life is not open to her, nor is the pursuit of intellect, outside of marriage. She weds the elderly Rev. Casaubon, a cold, narcissistic man, thinking that by assisting him with his scholarly research and writing, she will find happiness.

Dr. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch to begin his medical practice there. He is an idealist, who has dreams of finding a cure for cholera and opening a free clinic. He meets blonde and beautiful Rosamund Vincie, who fancies him for a spouse...along with a new house, new furniture, an extensive wardrobe, etc.

A dashing, romantic Will Ladislaw, nephew of Rev. Casaubon, enters the story, as does Rosie's brother Fred, who wants desperately to marry his Mary, but is out of work and in debt. This cast of richly drawn characters continues to grow with the introduction of Mary's family, the Garths, the banker Bulstrode, friends, relations, and an evil villain or two.

"Middlemarch," a complex novel and portrait of the times, is one of the best reading experiences I have had in a long while. I returned to George Eliot's masterwork 30 years after my initial encounter - and it was/is so worth the re-read!
JANA

Little better
OK, she does not have Tolstoy's range, or quite the intensity of Stendhal, but this is by some stretch the best novel written in English to date -- and is more than up there with the best of the French and Russians. Imaginative intelligence in both plotting and characterisation, unflinching realism tempered with clear-sighted humanity, a killing eye for detail and a complete intolerance for cant or b/s. For all that this book does not offer easy pleasures -- Eliot, to modify Woolf's comments, was a grown-up writing for grown-ups -- it is all the more enjoyable for that. It might have been written 130 years ago, but this remains one of the best lenses through which to view, and to dignify, those parts of our lives that too often get overlooked, ignored or forgotten: which is to say, most of them. And guys, arm candy may be great, but steer clear of anyone who even vaguely puts you in mind of Rosamund.