Product Description

This title is part of an inexpensive range of classics in the "Penguin Popular Classics" series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #511740 in Books
• Published on: 1995-04-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

From the Publisher
In Middlemarch George Eliot gives us a portrait of provincial life in Victorian England that has never been surpassed.

Wit, irony, pathos and brilliant insight into human nature colour every strand of plot and every beautifully drawn character. Foremost among these and Dorothea Booke, passionate to use her spirit and talent in a wider world than that typically afforded to women in the 1830s; Casuabon, the dry, jealous academic; Doctor Lydgate, who dreams of pioneering research in medical science; spoilt, pretty Rosamond Vincy who sees as 'a man whom it would be delightful to enslave'.

The novel centres on the marriages of Dorothea and of Lydgate, and on the web of relationships that connects us to each other. While eagerly awaiting the next part of the Middlemarch serial in 1872, the Spectator critic declared that 'Middlemarch bids more than fair to be one of the great books of the world'.

Customer Reviews

Not for the Goldfish.
If you have a seven-second attention span then stick to MTV but if you have the time and space to devote to this mammoth work, you will not regret it. I have read every book ever written (honest) and this is the greatest novel I have found so far. It is an intelligent and absorbing work which follows the lives of a wide variety of characters with humour and profound insight. Laugh at the effrontery of repulsive Mr Raffles, wince at the manipulations of sinister Mr Bulstrode, cringe at the monstrous selfishness of doll-like Rosamund, hold your breath at the will-they won't-they haphazard course of true love between Fred Vincy and Mary Garth and live through the painful path from ignorance to self-knowledge with the unworldly (and occasionally downright clueless) heroine Dorothea.