Middlemarch

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George Eliots masterpiece groundbreaking in its psychological insight into powerful clashes of obligation & desire Middlemarch" is edited with notes & an introduction by Rosemary Ashton in " Penguin Classics". George Eliots most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives & changing fortunes in a provincial English community prior to the Reform Bill of 1832. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund & pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; passionate idealistic & penniless artist Will Ladislaw; & the religious hypocrite Bulstrode hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave George Eliot creates a richly nuanced & moving drama. This edition uses the text of the second edition of 1874. In her introduction Rosemary Ashton biographer of George Eliot discusses the themes of change in " Middlemarch" & examines the novels as an imaginative embodiment of Eliots humanist beliefs. Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator & later editor of the " Westminster Review". In 1857 she published " Scenes of Clerical Life" the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of George Eliot including " The Mill on the Floss" " Middlemarch" & " Daniel Deronda". If you enjoyed " Middlemarch" you might like Charles Dickens " Bleak House" also available in " Penguin Classics". " No Victorian novel approaches " Middlemarch" in its width of reference its intellectual power or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative". (V. S. Pritchett). " One of the few English novels written for adult people". (Virginia Woolf)."