Middlemarch George Eliot 9781541193987 Books
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Middlemarch By George Eliot Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, first published in eight instalments during 1871–2. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32, and it comprises several distinct (though intersecting) stories and a large cast of characters. Significant themes include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Middlemarch originates in two unfinished pieces that Eliot worked on during the years 1869 and 1870 the novel "Middlemarch" and the long story "Miss Brooke" (which focused on the character of Dorothea). The former piece is first mentioned in her journal on 1 January 1869 as one of the tasks for the coming year. In August she began writing, but progress ceased in the following month amidst a lack of confidence about it and distraction caused by the illness of George Henry Lewes's son Thornie, who was dying of tuberculosis. Following Thornie's death on 19 October 1869, all work on the novel stopped; it is uncertain at this point whether or not Eliot intended to revive it at a later date. In December she writes of having begun another story, on a subject that she had considered "ever since I began to write fiction". By the end of the month she had written a hundred pages of this story and entitled it "Miss Brooke". Although a precise date is unknown, the process of incorporating material from "Middlemarch" into the story she had been working on was ongoing by March 1871. In the process of composition, Eliot compiled a notebook of hundreds of literary quotations including excerpts from poets, historians, playwrights, philosophers, and critics in eight different languages.
Middlemarch George Eliot 9781541193987 Books
I fully understand why this book is described as one of the great novels written in the English language. It is absorbing and compelling. The characters and situations are beautifully depicted. The range and breadth of feelings and emotions give the book a realism that makes the reader feel totally involved. Despite this it is written so well that it is very accessible and readable. Wonderful.Product details
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Middlemarch George Eliot 9781541193987 Books Reviews
This is a dense and long book. Just so wonderfully written I'm taking it slow and enjoying it immensely. Something to turn to whenever I have a few minutes to read.
This is a very long book. It was a summer read and I don't remember details.
I do remember enjoying it very much.
Another beautifully written fiction sprinkled with an earlier form of English that is so pleasant for me to read.
I love the whole thought life that's revealed for the main characters and the conversations that are so considerate in the formality and strategy. Such a lovely philosophy, included among the patriachal ignorant cruelty toward womankind.
The production value and design of this book (large 14 point font) makes it practically unreadable. The tight kerning and leading, the san-serif font choice, the thoughtless layout (justified type, no spaces between paragraphs and new chapters headings at the top, middle and bottoms of pages), and the tiny margins combine to make each page densely packed and unpleasant to look at. Do not purchase this version of this book.
I don't play favorites with novels or anything else, but if I were to do so I would place Middlemarch at the very top of my favorite novels. She and this novel have been intimate friends of mine for many years, and I very much enjoyed and appreciated this edition which replaces one which I have literally read to pieces.
Norman Davis
Middlemarch A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot has been proclaimed by more than one writer as the greatest novel in the English language. Virginia Woolf, in her assessment, called it "the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Who am I to disagree?
The book marked another glaring gap in my literary education and so I resolved to fill that gap in 2015. There were times during its reading that I thought it might take me the entire year to fulfill my resolution. At more than 800 very wordy pages, it requires a commitment of time and attention.
I had somehow expected the novel to be difficult to get into, as 19th century literature sometimes is, but I was surprised to find that the narrative captured me almost from the first sentence and I was eager to learn just how the story would reveal itself.
Middlemarch is most definitely not a quick and easy read though. Written for a 19th century audience that expected very detailed descriptions and explanations of backgrounds for the characters and plots of the novels they read, George Eliot, I am sure, fully met those expectations with this epic tale.
The action of the novel takes place during 1830-32 in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch in England. It was written more than thirty years after that time and so the author was able to write it as one looking back upon events with the perspective of history.
There is an almost bewildering number of characters. The reader sometimes feels that she is making the acquaintance of every single soul in the town, but, in fact, the action focuses on three main characters and it is through them that everything else is revealed.
The central character is Dorothea Brooke, a well-to-do young woman who has been brought up, with her sister Celia, by their uncle Mr. Brooke, who is himself a bit of a comical character. Dorothea is intelligent and highly idealistic and she longs to lead a life of the mind. Her uncle expects her to marry their wealthy, well-respected neighbor, Sir James Chettam, but Dorothea chooses instead an intellectual, a dry pedantic scholar named Edward Casaubon who is several decades older than she. He is not in robust health and the thoroughly predictable happens. He dies some eighteen months after the marriage, leaving Dorothea even more wealthy. But before he dies, he writes a codicil to his will, that states that if Dorothea should marry his young cousin, Will Ladislaw, she will forfeit the estate.
Dorothea had first met Ladislaw on her honeymoon in Italy and there was an instant connection between them, as they talked and found they had many interests in common. Casaubon, a very jealous man, was determined to stop that relationship from developing any further.
Meanwhile, Tertius Lydgate, who was an idealistic young doctor who had modern ideas about reform of the medical profession, had arrived in Middlemarch and was trying to set up a practice and make his way there. Lydgate gets to know the town's financier, Mr. Bulstrode, whom, we slowly learn, has a checkered and secret past.
Bulstrode had married into the Vincy family and had a niece, Rosamund Vincy, who was the daughter of the mayor and was considered the town's great beauty. Lydgate was captivated by her appearance, giving scarcely a thought to her character (which was hopelessly shallow and self-centered) and he determined to marry her.
Rosamund had a brother, Fred, who is the third major character through whose eyes we see the "provincial life" revealed. He is university-educated, restless, and irresponsible, supposedly destined for the church (by his family) and thoroughly unhappy about that prospect. He has long - since childhood, in fact - been in love with Mary Garth, daughter of an estate manager and considered by his family to be far beneath him socially and not a suitable wife. Mary returns his feelings but tells him that she will never accept him if he goes into the church - because she knows that he would be miserable in that profession.
As we get to know these characters and all their associations with others in the town, we also get a sense of the issues of the day. We learn something, for example, of the Great Reform Bill that was hotly debated at the time and of the construction of a new mode of transportation, the railways. We also see, through Lydgate and his associations, something of the state of medical science at that time. As the community faces many changes related to these issues, we encounter the deeply reactionary mindset of the settled community, a mindset that is the living definition of "provincial."
It is remarkable that for almost 150 years, Middlemarch has been able to retain its status as one of the masterpieces of English fiction. This is true in spite of some of the quibbles expressed by some reviewers and readers about the ultimate destiny of some of the characters, especially Dorothea, whom the reader comes to identify with so thoroughly and to have such high hopes for. In the end, she subordinates her life and desires to those of the man she loves, Ladislaw. But even though she did not, perhaps, make her own distinctive mark in the world, George Eliot speaks in her final paragraph of her hidden influence
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
Many of us would be happy with such an epitaph.
The last 20% of this book was a page-turner, as the different threads came together in a powerful and poignant way. Past sins are exposed, idealists are caught up in the quagmire of reality, and mis-communications threatens to stifle budding young loves. The quality of the prose was first-rate, and the character depth and portrayals were among the best I've ever encountered.
With that said, the first 80% of the book was too slow, plodding, and filled with narrator intrusion for me to give the overall experience 5 stars. Indeed, the first 80% of the book was, for the most part, just good enough to keep plodding along, and I, like other readers, contemplated more than once simply putting the thing down. I'm glad I didn't, but the Victorian era prose can be difficult for modern American hayseeds like me.
If you're patient and/or simply enjoy a narrator who takes her time getting to the point, then you'll be more likely to enjoy this book.
I fully understand why this book is described as one of the great novels written in the English language. It is absorbing and compelling. The characters and situations are beautifully depicted. The range and breadth of feelings and emotions give the book a realism that makes the reader feel totally involved. Despite this it is written so well that it is very accessible and readable. Wonderful.
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