Book description
With an essay by Barbara Hardy.
'What can I do? ... I must get up in the morning and do what
every one else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem
to see all that can be - and I am tired and sick of it. And the
world is all confusion to me'
George Eliot's last, most controversial novel opens as the spoiled
Gwendolen Harleth, poised at a roulette table about to throw away a
small fortune, captivates Daniel Deronda. As their lives become
intertwined, they are also transformed by suffering, misfortune,
revelations and Daniel's fascination with the Jewish singer Mirah.
Daniel Deronda shocked Victorian readers with its portrayal of
the Jewish experience in British society, and remains a moving and
epic portrayal of human passions.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) (1819-80) was a philosopher,
journalist and translator before she became a novelist, her first
stories being published in 1856. She led an unconventional life,
co-editing the liberal journal Westminster Review for three
years and living with the married man and philosopher George Henry
Lewes. Her novels are among the greatest of the nineteenth century.
The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch
are all published in the Penguin English Library.
