by George Eliot Category: Classic Fiction / General Publication
date: 19940100 Number of pages: 880 Writing at the very moment
when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged
and undermined, George Eliot fashions in Middlemarch (1871-2)
the quintessential Victorian novel, a concept of life and
society free from the dogma of the past yet able to confront the
scepticism that was taking over the age. In a panoramic sweep of
English life during thr years leading up to the First Reform
Bill of 1832, Eliot explores nearly every subject of concern to
modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society,
human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most
remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the
heroine, idealistic but naive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and
egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar: Tertius
Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician: the
passionate artist Will Ladislaw: and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth,
childhood sweethearts whose