Book description
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse
lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its
landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for
intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the
pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose
marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical
methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite
Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories
interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama,
hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for
adult people'.
Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator
and 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, and DANIEL DERONDA.
Rosemary Ashton is Professor of English Language and Literature at
University College London.
