Middlemarch

by Eliot, George; Ashton, Rosemary

• ISBN13: 9780140433883
• ISBN10: 0140433880
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-03-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

This panoramic work--considered the finest novel in English by many critics--offers a complex look at English provincial life at a crucial historical moment, and, at the same time, dramatizes and explores some of the most potent myths of Victorian literature. The text of this edition comesfrom the Clarendon Middlemarch, the first critical edition of the novel.

Author Biography

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans Cross) was born on November 22, 1819 at Arbury Farm, Warwickshire, England. She received an ordinary education and, upon leaving school at the age of sixteen, embarked on a program of independent study to further her intellectual growth. In 1841 she moved with her father to Coventry, where the influences of “skeptics and rationalists” swayed her from an intense religious devoutness to an eventual break with the church. The death of her father in 1849 left her with a small legacy and the freedom to pursue her literary inclinations. In 1851 she became the assistant editor of the Westminster Review, a position she held for three years. In 1854 came the fated meeting with George Henry Lewes, the gifted editor of The Leader, who was to become her adviser and companion for the next twenty-four years. Her first book, Scenes of a Clerical Life (1858), was followed by Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1872). The death of Lewes, in 1878, left her stricken and lonely. On May 6, 1880, she married John Cross, a friend of long standing, and after a brief illness she died on December 22 of that year, in London.
Rosemary Ashton, Professor of English Literature at University College, London, is the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Middlemarch.
Rosemary Ashton, Professor of English Literature at University College, London, is the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Middlemarch.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii	(16)
Rosemary Ashton
Suggested Further Reading	xxiii	(2)
A Note on the Text	xxv
PRELUDE	3	(2)
BOOK ONE: Miss Brooke	5	(116)
BOOK TWO: Old and Young	121	(106)
BOOK THREE: Waiting for Death	227	(94)
BOOK FOUR: Three Love Problems	321	(108)
BOOK FIVE: The Dead Hand	429	(104)
BOOK SIX: The Widow and the Wife	533	(104)
BOOK SEVEN: Two Temptations	637	(94)
BOOK EIGHT: Sunset and Sunrise	731	(101)
FINALE	832	(7)
Notes	839