Middlemarch

First published in instalments between 1871 and 1872, Middlemarch is George Eliot’s richly layered portrait of a provincial English town on the eve of the Reform Act of 1832. At its heart is Dorothea Brooke, an intelligent and idealistic young woman whose longing for a meaningful life leads her into a deeply unequal marriage, alongside the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate, whose hopes for medical reform become entangled with the demands of society and marriage. Around them, Eliot weaves the fortunes of the Garth, Vincy and Bulstrode families into a broad account of private aspiration, public change and the intricate ties that bind a community.

With extraordinary psychological insight and a compassionate, often gently ironic narrator, Eliot examines the distance between idealism and experience, the limits placed upon women, the compromises of ambition and the moral significance of ordinary lives. Set against the political and social transformations of nineteenth-century England, Middlemarch is both an intimate study of character and a sweeping portrait of a society in transition. Widely regarded as one of the greatest novels in the English language, it represents the full maturity of Eliot’s art and its profound belief in the importance of sympathy.

From the book

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

— George Eliot, Middlemarch

On Middlemarch

“The magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”

— Virginia Woolf, “George Eliot”