One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
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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 are Tertius Lydgate, a talented yet naive young doctor; Dorothea Brooke, stuck in a loveless marriage; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding shocking crimes from his past.
An intricate story weaving together many lives, Middlemarch is described as one of the best-loved novels of all time and heralded as one of the few English novels written for grown-up people by Virginia Woolf. It is a richly nuanced drama that is a quintessential English classic.
George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot's best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.
