Middlemarch – George Eliot

The most ambitious narrative of nineteenth-century realism, Middlemarch tells the story of an entire town in the years leading up to the Reform Bill of 1832, a time when modern methods were starting to challenge old orthodoxies. Eliot’s sophisticated and acute characterization vividly brings to life the town’s inhabitants – including the young idealist Dorothea Brooke, the dry scholar Casaubon, the young, passionate reformist doctor Lydgate, the flighty young beauty Rosamond and the old, secretive banker Bulstrode – as they move in counterpoint to each other. Art, religion, politics, society, science, human relationships in all their complexity, nothing is left unexamined under the narrator’s microscope. One of the greatest novels written in the English language, Middlemarch is a literary landmark in its groundbreaking approach, as well as a priceless document of its age. George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological insight. Middlemarch is her masterpiece.