Middlemarch

by George Eliot

Overview

By the time the novel appeared to tremendous popular and critical acclaim in 1871-2, George Eliot was recognized as England's finest living novelist. It was her ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in the rising provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and suspense, «Middlemarch» is richer still in character, in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community, and in the great art that enlarges the reader's sympathy and imagination. It is truly, as Virginia Woolf famously remarked, 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'. "One of the few English novels written for grown-up people." —Virginia Woolf "What do I think of ‘Middlemarch’? What do I think of glory — except that in a few instances this 'mortal has already put on immortality.' George Eliot was one. The mysteries of human nature surpass the 'mysteries of redemption,' for the infinite we only suppose, while we see the finite." —Emily Dickinson "‘Middlemarch’ is probably the greatest English novel." —Julian Barnes "They've [women] produced the greatest writer in the English language ever, George Eliot, and arguably the third greatest, Jane Austen, and certainly the greatest novel, ‘Middlemarch’..." —Martin Amis

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789895621538
Publisher:	Pandora's Box
Publication date:	04/19/2021
Sold by:	De Marque
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880), a British author whose works, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and others are distinguished by their eloquent prose and realism. The author’s sharp insight into the minds and motivations of her characters is credited with pioneering psychological realism in fiction. Evans led an unorthodox life for the Victorian era, leaving the church and spending years as the companion of a married man, but the popularity of her novels won her acceptance into society and made her a celebrity. Her books are classics, but Middlemarch stands out as one of the most highly praised novels in English.

Read an Excerpt

WHO that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa,' has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand - in - hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide - eyed and helpless - looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child - pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many - volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her. Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self - despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.
That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far - resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill - matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyestheir struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later - born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardour alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.
Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love - stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart -beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long recognisable deed.


From the Paperback edition.

Copyright 2000 by George Eliot

Table of Contents

Contents
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of George Eliot
MIDDLEMARCH
Explanatory Notes

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
—Virginia Woolf

“The most profound, wise and absorbing of English novels . . . and, above all, truthful and forgiving about human behaviour.”
—Hermione Lee

"No Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative...I doubt if any Victorian novelist has as much to teach the modern novelists as George Eliot...No writer has ever represented the ambiguities of moral choice so fully".
—V. S. Pritchett

"Middlemarch is probably the greatest English novel."
—Julian Barnes

"It is possible to argue that Middlemarch is the greatest English novel."
—A. S. Byatt

 
"Certainly the greatest [English] novel."
—Martin Amis

 

A. S. Byatt

It is a hugely ambitious, hugely successful, wise, and satisfying work. I never reread it without discovering something I hadn't noticed before.

Reading Group Guide

1. Discuss the relationship between religious and secular, spiritual and worldly, in the novel. Is it conflicted or not? Why?

2. What is Eliot's view of ambition in its different forms-social, intellectual, political? How is this evident in the novel?

3. In her introduction, A. S. Byatt contends that Eliot was "the great English novelist of ideas." How do you interpret this? How do you think ideas-human thought-inform the plot of Middlemarch?

4. George Eliot is a pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans. How does Eliot's femaleness-and her concealing of it-add resonance to the novel, if at all? Do you see Dorothea's character differently in this regard? Do you see Middlemarch as a "women's" novel?

5. Middlemarch was originally published in serial form, a single book at a time. What kinds of concerns affected Eliot's narrative in this regard? How do these discrete segments differ from the whole?

6. Discuss the convention of marriage in the novel. Do you feel it ultimately restricts the characters? Or is it the novel's provincial setting that proves more oppressive?

7. Discuss the metaphor of Dorothea as St. Theresa. What is Eliot saying here?

Editorial Reviews

"Excellent text—one of the best editions of any 19th century novel available in paper."—Alexander S. Gourlay, University of Nebraska

"Like the other World's Classics, this is a good text in a well-designed format, with adequate but unobtrusive editorial aids and introductions, biographical information, notes—at a fair price."—Robert D. Beckett, Southwest Missouri State University

From the Publisher

Known for her social commentary on women's roles and class strictures, Eliot delves into the romantic dilemmas of the Brooke sisters and others in a provincial Midlands town. Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) surrounds the protagonists with a gallery of characters from many social classes—laborers, shopkeepers, clergy, landed gentry, and others. Kate Reading portrays Eliot's characters with a faultless British accent and lends the prose emphasis and expression. As the novel’s several couples are trapped by societal judgments, irreversible mistakes, indecision, and restraint, their dilemmas, as well as Eliot’s psychological insights and use of irony, make them sound like modern figures. Reading's well-paced, measured narration captures the novel's realism—with its fresh rendering of a complex and often harsh social world. A.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2008 - AudioFile