Product Description

Writing at the very moment when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged and undermined, George Eliot fashions in Middlemarch (1871-2) the quintessential Victorian novel, a concept of life and society free from the dogma of the past yet able to confront the scepticism that was taking over the age. In a panoramic sweep of English life during thr years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Eliot explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, idealistic but näive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar: Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician: the passionate artist Will Ladislaw: and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein. Felicia Bonaparte has provided a new Introduction for this updated edition, the text of which is taken from David Carroll's Clarendon Middlemarch (1986), the first critical edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92117 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 904 pages

About the Author
David Carroll is Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster. He edited George Eliot: The Critical Heritage (1971), and the Clarendon edition of Middlemarch (1986). He is joint General Editor of the Longman Literature in English Series.
Felicia Bonaparte is Professor of English at the City University of New York and has written extensively on George Eliot. Among her other publications is the experimental biography The Gypsy-Bachelor of Manchester: The Life of Mrs Gaskell's Demon (1992).

Customer Reviews

My favourite novel ever
I read it many years ago and keep going back to my dog-eared Penguin Paperback to marvel at certain passages. It is huge and all-encompassing, and deals just as well with work as it does with love - a rare compliment indeed. Forget Dickens and Hardy and all those other writers of soap operas for children - this is truly "one of the few great novels written for grown-ups" (I quote Virginia Wolff from the back cover). (And for fans of Jane Austen, it's also a great soppy romantic page-turner with one of the most desirable female leads in literature)

Middlemarch
George Eliot gets inside the mindset of inhabitants of a small town and extrapolates their most innemost feelings towards each other. Fascinating read.

not a favourite.
I found this book very long and dull. I enjoyed parts of the story but Often the storytelling is replaced by pages and pages of politics.
It has its devotees though and is not entirely without merit so I guess all must judge for themselves. I really wanted to enjoy it but it just didn't press the right buttons for me.

I couldn't reccomend it.