Middlemarch [Paperback]

One of the best-loved works of the nineteenth century,Middlemarchexplores the complex social relationships in a town that moves and breathes with a life of its own."No Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative."
--V. S. PritchettGeorge 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 theWestminster Review, a position she held for three years. In 1854 came the fated meeting with George Henry Lewes, the gifted editor ofThe 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 byAdam Bede(1859),The Mill on the Floss(1860),Silas Marner(1861), andMiddlemarch(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.WHO that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa,' has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand - in - hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddlc"