George Eliot

Middlemarch, George Eliot's most ambitious novel, is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. It features a richly drawn cast of characters whose stories interweave to create a nuanced and moving drama. Among its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the...

The new paperback series - Penguin English Library ‘She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings - that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible...

Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival in the local squire's son Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty is soon attracted by Arthur's seductive charm, and they begin to meet in secret. The relationship is to have tragic consequences that reach far beyond the couple themselves, touching not just Adam Bede,...

Daniel Deronda, George Eliot's last novel, is a richly textured portrait of British society and the Jewish experience within it. As the story opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper classes. While Gwendolen loses...

George Eliot's masterful classic, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition. Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Middlemarch, George Eliot's most ambitious novel, is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a...

Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and...

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents. However, her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between...

When the young nobleman Harold Transome returns to England from the colonies with a self-made fortune, he scandalises the town of Treby Magna with his decision to stand for Parliament as a Radical. But after the idealistic Felix Holt also returns to the town, the difference between Harold's opportunistic values and Holt's profound beliefs becomes apparent. Forthright, brusque and driven...

One of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family, during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to control the city. At its heart is Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar, married to the clever but ultimately treacherous Tito. His...

Vintage Classics brings you one of the most admired, best loved and most influential novels in the history of English literature. Discover one of the most admired, best loved and influential novels in the history of English literature. The perfect long read to lose yourself in. 'If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life.' Dorothea...

The text of The Mill on the Floss, based on the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions. Backgrounds includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centring on the novel's content and composition; Brother and Sister (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews...

With new illustrations and a brilliant original introduction by New Yorker writer and author of My Life in Middlemarch Rebecca Mead, the Restless Classics edition of Middlemarch presents George Eliot's masterpiece of Victorian fiction in an appealing new light. Long regarded as one of the greatest of the great English-language novels, Middlemarch by George Eliot has endured as the archetypal...

The most ambitious narrative of nineteenth-century realism, Middlemarch tells the story of an entire town in the years leading up to the Reform Bill of 1832, a time when modern methods were starting to challenge old orthodoxies. Eliot’s sophisticated and acute characterization gives rich expression to every nuance of feeling, and vividly brings to life the town’s inhabitants – including...

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood! When sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.” Raised in the idyllic setting of Dorlcote Mill, the wild and wilful Maggie Tulliver adores her elder brother Tom and is forever trying to gain...

‘Was her life to be always like this? - always bringing some new source of inward strife?’ When the miller Mr Tulliver becomes entangled in lawsuits, he sets off a chain of events that will profoundly affect the lives of his family and bring into conflict his passionate daughter Maggie with her inflexible but adored brother Tom. As she grows...

This deluxe hardback edition presents George Eliot's enduring classic, Middlemarch, featuring stunning cover embossing and printed page edges. Described by some as the greatest novel in the English Language, Middlemarch paints a captivating portrait of provincial life at the time of the Industrial Revolution. The story follows the idealistic Dorothea Brooke and the pioneering Tertius Lydgate and their disastrous marriages...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbours’ Rejecting the conventional narratives of the time, Middlemarch shows a realistic portrayal of Victorian village life. Peopling this ground-breaking work...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1874 corrected edition of the text, with small textual variations from Eliot's manuscript. Introductory materials and explanatory footnotes by Ronjaunee Chatterjee. Twenty-three background selections from Eliot's correspondence, journals, and other writings. Seventeen critical responses, including five contemporary reactions and twelve critical analyses of the novel's most important themes. A chronology of Eliot's life and...

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts. The greatest 'state of the nation' novel in English, Middlemarch addresses ordinary life at a moment of great social change, in the years leading to the Reform Act of 1832. Through her portrait of a Midlands town, George Eliot addresses gender relations and class, self-knowledge and self-delusion, community...

"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand." Silas Marner is a simple weaver from Lantern Yard, an impoverished area of Northern England. He is the main protagonist who is wrongly accused of being a robber. Silas loses his sweetheart, reputation, and as a result, has to move out of the town. He dedicates the next fifteen years of his...

Adam Bede is George Eliot's first novel, a tale of rural tragedy and redemption. It may seem like an old tale: the beautiful village girl, her faithful admirer, a country squire's seduction. But when seen through the eyes of any of its players, the old tale becomes one of fresh heartbreak, innocent hopes, best intentions gone awry, and better selves...