Scenes of Clerical Life

Scenes of Clerical Life #1-3

by George Eliot, Thomas A. Noble (Editor)

A collection of three stories. The Stories take place in and around the fictional town of Milby in the English Midlands. Each of the Scenes concerns a different Anglican clergyman, but is not necessarily centred upon him. Eliot examines, among other things, the effects of religious reform and the tension between the Established and the Dissenting Churches on the clergymen and their congregations, and draws attention to various social issues, such as poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence.

This book has 387 pages and originally published in 1857.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, 19th Century, Victorian, Literature, British Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1857

About the author

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

Reviews

[Piyangie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scenes of Clerical Life was George Eliot's first publication of fiction. The collection comprises three novellas set in the fictitious town of Milby. Each story revolves around an evangelical clergyman of a different time frame, but Eliot skilfully steers away from religious debates. Rather, the three novellas advocate humanity. After she renounced orthodox Christian faith, Eliot's religion was the religion of humanity. She championed a genuine moral and emotional connection between people through literature. Love, sympathy, and mercy were, to her, human traits rather than divine commands. The stories meditate on the need for a deeper human sympathy and understanding over rigid moral judgment.

However, as her first attempt at fiction, the stories lack coherence at times, jumping from scene to scene. The first story (The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton) had a cold, matter-of-fact tone; the second story (Mr. Gilfil's Love Story) was overly melodramatic; and the third story (Janet's Repentance) was preachy. Yet her potential as a writer was clearly displayed. The stories also demonstrated her inclination towards realism. George Eliot brought ordinary, flawed, human beings and their "commonplace troubles" to life. In the first story of the collection she says: "I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a man who was so very far from remarkable, - a man whose virtues were not heroic,...who had not the slightest mystery hanging about him, but was palpably and unmistakably commonplace." This amply shows her preference for the genre.

Eliot had full sympathy for ordinary people and delved deeper into the characters' psychologies to expose their suffering. This is why her stories are often depressing. Eliot doesn't shy away from real-life trials, and death is almost always a natural consequence in her stories. Tragedy is a signature element in Eliot's writing, so reading her stories is not always easy. In Scenes of Clerical Life, all three stories are tragic. I'm familiar with her use of the tragic element, but here, too many deaths and dark, dismal endings made the reading depressing and unenjoyable. The characters received my sympathy only from a distance. I couldn't warm to their miseries.

I have enjoyed both Middlemarch and Silas Marner, but George Eliot is the kind of author who, though you admire and respect, is hard to love. At least, that's how I feel about her.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbor is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.”

Eliot uses her characteristic empathy to look behind the “scenes of clerical life” portrayed in this volume. She tells three stories, connected in that they take place in and around the fictional English town of Milby and each concerns a certain Anglican clergyman whose religious views are under criticism.

In “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” we watch the Reverend picked apart by his parishioners, and then see how his good deeds lead to misfortune. It is unsparingly tragic.

“Mr Gilfil’s Love-Story” is also sad, but is more high romance than tragedy, full of chivalry and unselfish passion.

The culmination is reached in “Janet’s Repentance.” By this time your heart has been pummeled by the first two “scenes,” and you are ready for a happy ending. But Eliot, true to form, has created a real life heroine and hero. They struggle with their own “sins” and their purgatory is harrowing, but this final installment ends with a beautiful triumph of the soul.

Each story has a long, drawn-out build up, and a couple of times I was confused by the timeframe or narrative point of view. Otherwise I found them gorgeous, dense, and moving, and I loved all three.

I can’t resist a few more thoughts …

Have you ever received a gift box that you thought contained one item but turned out to have multiple extra gifts tucked under the wrapping? That’s what a George Eliot story is like. You think it is one gift, but when you open it, you realize it’s overflowing with extra little surprise gems. And I could say that reading this book took effort, but that would be like complaining about the trouble it takes to unwrap all those extra gifts. Like almost missing one of hidden items in the gift package, as I read, I often thought, “Oh, that sentence! And I almost read too fast and missed its impact!”

Here’s an example of one such loaded sentence:
“I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind’s eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight.”

Not the fastest reading, right? But worth it, don’t you think?

I also kept thinking of the Virginia Woolf quote that Eliot’s Middlemarch was “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” which I believe applies to all of Eliot’s work. What does Woolf mean by this? One possibility is that being a grown-up is about handling the truth: things don’t happen the way you plan; everyone dies; people are more complicated than you think they are. Eliot is particularly good at that last one.

A quote from the author presented in the introduction may provide the key to her grown-up, empathetic style. In a letter to a friend, she wrote, “…our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.”

Each of the stories in this book was about unique and specific individuals. Each surprised me. And maybe they helped me to grow up just a little bit more.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the first story in this collection would only garner a 3.5 rating from me, the other two more than make up for it and thus find me giving the book a firm 5-stars.

This is not technically a novel, but a collection of three stories that are all centered around the clergy in the same area of Milby and Shepperton, England. We meet, and are told the stories of, three separate clergyman who serve the district at separate times.

The first story is titled, The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton , and his fortunes are indeed sad. I liked the story and caught glimpses of George Eliot’s masterful style, but I never felt overly attached to any of the characters and did not relate on an emotional level. Here is the shadow of greater things to come, I thought.

The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way imagined to ourselves.

Little did I know that the greater things were to be found in the second story of the series, Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story . Here is a man who did touch and pull at my heartstrings. Here is a story with depth and meaning, that keeps you captivated beginning to end. I could feel George Eliot blossoming as she wrote. Maynard Gilfil is one of the finest and sweetest characters in Eliot’s fine fiction.

But it is with men as with trees: if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence; and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous beauty…

And, finally, the crowning glory is Janet’s Repentance , a story of reclamation and salvation and hope. This one brought me to tears, for I could not fail to feel Janet’s desperation and Mr. Tryan’s martyrdom at the hands of a society that purposely failed to appreciate or understand him. There is a sweetness and a sense of feeling that permeates this story that reminded me of why I loved The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch so much. There is moral instruction, without preaching, and there is example that is uplifting and yet ever human.

It is apt to be so in this life, I think. While we are coldly discussing a man’s career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labeling his opinions--’he is Evangelical and narrow’, or ‘Latitudinarian and Pantheistic’ or ‘Anglican and supercilious’--that man, in his solitude, is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed.

Could we not all take a lesson from that passage. Do unto others.

...everywhere there come sweet flowers without our foresight or labour. We reap what we sow, but Nature has love over and above that justice, and gives us shadow and blossom and fruit that spring from no planting of ours.

And finally:

They might give piety to much that was only puritanic egoism; they might call many things sin that were not sin; but they had at least the feeling that sin was to be avoided and resisted, and colour-blindness, which many mistake drab for scarlet, is better than total blindness, which sees no distinction of colour at all.

I am happiest when I close a book and feel that I have something worthwhile and meaningful to take away, that the impact is not temporary and will last, perhaps forever, in the part of the soul that craves instruction. Today I am happy.

[Charles Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of three stories, about the lives and work of clergymen in and near the small English town of Milby, was George Eliot’s first fictional work. As the Penguin Classics cover notes, it may seem odd that she chose church life for her stories, since she had broken with orthodox Christian belief some time earlier. After reading scholarly analyses of the Gospels, George Eliot had become convinced that they were essentially mythological stories. And, the introductory essay by David Lodge explains, this loss of belief led her to a stance of bold freethinking; she refused to attend church and for a time adopted a tone of confident secular scorn toward defenses of Christian faith.

There is none of that tone in the Clerical Life stories. They are, instead, beautiful stories of compassion and kindness, in which the church figures are more often portrayed sympathetically than otherwise. The plot of each can be told in a sentence. In the first story, the feelings of the parishioners toward their mediocre but well-meaning curate shift from laughing disregard to tender concern after calamity befalls his household. George Eliot had a rare power for making the commonplace moving and profound, and that power was already evident in this book.

If the plots are simple ones, Eliot’s purpose and message are somewhat less so. Two of the stories begin with energetic rifts in the community over some item of worship or church practice (e.g., Will the congregation sing a psalm or a more modern hymn for a newly married couple? Will Sunday evening lectures by the curate be tolerated? Will extemporaneous sermons in the evangelical style corrupt the congregation?). As people take sides against their neighbors over these issues, while giggling or sleeping through the sermons themselves, you the reader are lulled at first into imagining that Eliot’s project is a straightforward satire on the irrelevancy of much of what the Church does. It isn’t. Just as you’re chuckling or shaking your head at one of the characters along with the chorus of gossipy townspeople, something happens to jar you into recognition of a profound human need. And as your sympathy is awakened, so is the town’s; characters cast off their pettiness, and their better natures shine forth. Even the selfish and flawed characters reveal admirable capacities. You’re left regretting your own assumptions about the characters, having, as in Middlemarch, been taught a lesson by Eliot about hasty judgments.

What, then, is Eliot’s point about the Church? Why did she choose clerical life as the backdrop for her stories? My sense is that she’s conveying that, in the religion of humanity she’s espousing, Christian doctrine actually gets a lot of it right, and may be one of its best expressions. And by furnishing plentiful chances to serve others, life in a church community provides an avenue toward your own growth and fulfillment. It’s as if she’s saying that religious precepts, even if founded on mistaken beliefs, call us in the right direction for any kind of purposeful achievement in life: “No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.” Eliot’s claim for the mediocre curate in her first story is, at first, a modest one made with her characteristic gentle humor: by having the illusion that he is admired and doing much good, he is sustained to do a little good. By the end of the story, however, when he has unintentionally provided an occasion for his parishioners’ sympathy and generosity, he has done immense good.

Is there anything in Eliot’s writing relevant to today’s reader? If I were to describe my generation in broad terms, I would say that not many of us delve regularly into the Bible in search of enlightenment, yet we often still find ourselves drawn to church, especially as we reach parenting years. If this is a correct perception, then Eliot has a lot to say to us.

Even aside from its message, there is much to admire in Scenes of Clerical Life, especially if you enjoy Victorian literature. If the stories are not fast-paced, they are compelling, and told with an utter command of the English language that it is hard to find in today’s novels. Sentences go on for a paragraph, paragraphs go on for a page, but her prose throughout is lucid and elegant. I also especially enjoy her occasional interjections of dry but gentle humor. This is a good litmus test: if you find these two sentences delightful and amusing, you will probably like the book. If you find them annoying, it may not be for you. Passage #1: “Coffee despatched, the two young men walked out through the open window, and joined the ladies on the lawn, while Sir Christopher made his way to the library, solemnly followed by Rupert, his pet bloodhound, who, in his habitual place at the Baronet’s right hand, behaved with great urbanity during dinner; but when the cloth was drawn, invariably disappeared under the table, apparently regarding the claret-jug as a mere human weakness, which he winked at, but refused to sanction.” Passage #2: “The rooks were cawing with many-voiced monotony, apparently – by a remarkable approximation to human intelligence – finding great conversational resources in the change of weather.” I love the passages, and the book.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was skeptical that three novellas about three 19C English clerics could hold my attention for 400+ pages, but they most certainly did, and not at all because of the subject matter (which GE herself had just shaken off, and was looking back upon) but because she is not one of those writers who, with G.M. Hopkins ‘gathers to a greatness’ but emerges, ‘flame[s] out’ all at once, ‘like shining from shook foil’...you can literally feel her just arriving on the scene, but pretty much ready to scale Middlemarch...

Dickens saw it:

‘The extraordinary merit, the exquisite truth and delicacy of these stories I have never seen the like of … can never say enough of, I think them so truly admirable,’

...he wrote to Eliot, embodying as a reader what she had just written in the Westminster Review:

The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies… Appeals founded on generalisations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment… . Art is the closest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.

And so, to keep this as brief as possible, but still give any other future possible readers of this volume a taste of what I meant by my first statement above, please accept a sobering, autumnal missive...

The inexorable ticking of the clock is like the throb of pain to sensations made keen by a sickening fear. And so it is with the great clock-work of nature. Daisies and buttercups give way to the brown waving grasses, tinged with the warm red sorrel; the waving grasses are swept away, and the meadows lie like emeralds set in the bushy hedgerows; the tawny-tipped corn begins to bow with the weight of the full ear; the reapers are bending amongst it, and it soon stands in sheaves; then, presently, the patches of yellow stubble lie side by side with streaks of dark red earth, which the plough is turning up in preparation for the new-thrashed seed. And this passage from beauty to beauty, which to the happy is like the flow of a melody, measures for many a human heart the approach of foreseen anguish – seems hurrying on the moment when the shadow of dread will be followed up by the reality of despair.

...followed by this carpe diem-ism

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

[Lindenblatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Eliot’s first published stories. I wanted to read them ever since reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s letters, in which Mrs Gaskell expressed her admiration of these stories while fervently hoping that ‘George Eliot’ is not indeed Mary Anne Evans: "but Miss Evans' life taken at the best construction, does so jar against the beautiful book [Adam Bede] that one cannot help hoping against hope." - letter to G. Smith, 1859. I loved reading those letters!

I also love Eliot’s Adam Bede, Silas Marner as well as Middlemarch, however, Scenes of Clerical Life not so much. It’s very verbose, unfocused, and preachy. The book consists of three novellas, each of them illustrating the life and personal trials of a clergyman.

The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton: Begins deceptively humorous, ends in deep sadness. A story about the sacrificial lamb. Well-written but not satisfying.

Mr Gilfil’s Love-Story: A story about love, but not a love story. Loved the portrayal of the parish community at the beginning, but the ending was unsatisfying again.

Janet’s Repentance: Incredibly meandering and confusing at the beginning, then becoming very dark when dealing with a case of domestic abuse. I did like the ending of this last novella, but that might be owed to switching to the audiobook version (narrated by Bruce Pirie).

Overall 3⭐ because George Eliot did write so well.

Read with the Victorians! group, Aug-Sept 2026.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this from Blog A Penguin in return for which we had to post a review on the Penguin blog (which is now defunct, I think). It was easy because I loved this book and it made me wonder why I waste my time reading some contemporary stuff - most of which never warrants re-reading like the classics do.
There was some silly stuff in the intro about Eliot being conflicted over her loss of faith and the clerical life she depicts - I don't see the problem. These are affectionate portraits of ordinary people and their faults and foibles, and there's nothing unkind or strident in any of it. Eliot wrote as Austen and Trollope did, with a gentle wit and clever satire, relying on the perspicacity of her readers to discern the issues that mattered. So she knows how the wife of Amos Bates is worn out by child-bearing; how the social strata of English country life could trifle with a foundling's heart and break it; and how the religious controversies of the day were all so much of a storm in a tea cup.
I loved these gentle stories and am sorry to come to the end of them. Maybe I should read Middlemarch again...

[Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eliot's first novel is more like three short stories thematically linked through religious examination, female prerogative and compassionate love. A way for the budding author to control the plots without getting lost and yet while reading the assured prose one doubts that a possible outcome. Eliot breathes such life into her characters, examining them in complex intellectual, spiritual and emotional terms, so much so that one is forced to admit our current fiction writers are all defeated by personal/political narcissism. The balance she finds between men and women, faith and reason, is so subtle and ambiguous that the work becomes nothing less than high-art and should be a template for how an artist engages with the world around them.

[Rosamund · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Janet's Repentance I was compelled to read the first two stories and I think enjoyed them more because Eliot allowed more humour and gentleness, although the understanding and sensitivity she shows in her portrayal of domestic abuse in Janet's Repentance is very fine. Eliot's writing never disappoints me.

[Darryl Friesen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Granted, this isn’t probably as deserving of five stars as Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, The Mill on the Floss, or Romola (!), but it still gets the highest rating from me for its sheer delight, the charm of its Hardy-esque bucolic setting, and the undeniable emotional power and impact of George Eliot’s prose, albeit an early example of it, before she was truly writing at the height of her ability.

All three novellas included in this collection demonstrate a remarkable ability to draw the reader in, and George Eliot’s dialogue is already witty, pointed, lucid, and poignant. The self-realization and revelations the main characters undergo, and the remarkably relatable character arcs, particularly in “Janet’s Repentance,” are as good as anything GE writes later on, even though the shorter length of these stories prevents the depth of development that we see in GE’s later major works.

Mr Tryan is a new favourite character. After the parade of quirky, eccentric, pompous, hypocritical, hilarious, and downright evil clergymen of Austen, Dickens, Brontë, and Hardy, he is the humble, compassionate, long-suffering pastoral shepherd everyone would desire in their life—made gloriously ironic by Eliot’s own complicated personal history with Christianity and clergymen! Just goes to show what a genius she is…

A wonderful and highly recommended volume in the GE catalog—don’t miss this one just because its format and literary genre are different than her other works!

And as always, a huge thank-you to my GE buddy reading friends—you make my journey through her oeuvre so incredibly rewarding, rich, and personal! ❤️

[Carol Bakker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This debut novel by George Eliot (Marian Evans) — actually three novellas — was written in 1857, sometimes referred to as the Age of Religious Novels. Anthony Trollope wrote Barchester Towers in the same year. "Janet's Repentance" has unusual themes for a Victorian novel: domestic abuse and a female alcoholic.

Eliot was an early "exvangelical" who experienced a conversion while in her teens, then renounced her faith seven years later. And yet she paints a compelling and complimentary portrait of Edgar Tryan, the Evangelical pastor in the last story. As with many novels of manners, the plot moves at the pace of a glacier. The snark and humor evoked snorts of laughter.

After a dinner where two families are just meeting, but expecting their children to marry:

When the ladies were in the drawing-room again, Lady Assher was soon deep in a statement to Lady Cheverel of her views about burying people in woollen.

More gems:

She wanted something to rely on besides her own resolutions.

But our good Amos laboured under a deficiency of small tact as well as small cash.

They entered, all with that brisk and cheerful air which a sermon is often observed to produce when it is quite finished.

3.5 stars

[Penny -Thecatladybooknook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edit: April 22, 2025. Funny! I read the first two novellas in April of 2024! Then went into a slump.

Editing to say I finished Janet's Repentance and while I had a hard time getting into it (the first 3 chapters), once it hit, it HITS! This ended up being my favorite of the collection with the first, Amos Barton, as my 2nd favorite.


4 stars to Amos Barton
4 stars to The Love Story of Mr. Gilfil
4.5 stars to Janet's Repentance

So overall I'd give 4.5 stars to the collection.

_________________
April 24, 2024
I'm going to dnf the last novella in this book and come back to it another time. My brain just doesn't want to read it right now. I'm feeling slumpy and instead of giving this collection of 3 novellas a lesser rating due to my slump, I'm going to rate it based on the two I did read.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first exposure to George Eliot. So I will have to read much more before I can adequately understand whether I appreciated this sufficiently.

George Eliot, Scenes of a Clerical Life (1857) [4]

“The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton” [5.5]

“Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story” [5-]

“Janet’s Repentance” [3.5]

I found the first story utterly delightful, and its sharp and wicked wit was wholly unexpected. The second was also sharp and vivid; the characters are so original! But the final story was more melodramatic, somewhat tedious, with all its theological speculations, and thus unnecessarily long. The central issue of domestic abuse is mostly delayed until the final quarter. The characterizations are vivid, and some of the prose is wonderful. But it did not need to go on at such great length.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even George Eliot’s early efforts at fiction in these three stories are filled with such human emotion! She brought tears to my eyes with each story, though Janet’s Repentance is definitely my favorite of the three.

[Zandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read 'Scenes of Clerical Life' after having just read Trollope's 'Chronicles of Barsetshire' and all of Jane Austen's works. It is interesting how arcane arguments within the Church of England was such a hot topic for Victorian novelists. There is, with all three writers, a sense that the clergy are the moral and intellectual backbone of a community, even though they may be personally flawed and often not particularly good at relating to their parishioners. More than Trollope and Austen, George Eliot is searching earnestly for what is sacred, even though she does not, at this stage in her life, believe in the reality of a transcendent God. In the characters of Mrs Barton and Janet Dempster we have women who have beautifully noble, loving, self-sacrificing natures; they are by nature religious, quite apart from belief in any creed. But their lives are tragic ones, Eliot does not allow them the benefit of a providential God. Yet reading Eliot makes me feel that every flawed person has a sacred core, perhaps too crushed by the sorrow of the world to be clearly evident, but never-the-less, there is cause for compassion and common human feeling, rather than petty judgementalism.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this a couple of weeks ago. All I can say is that this is astonishingly good, both intellectually and emotionally. The writing is truly gifted and I enjoyed every minute.

[Shauna · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my Penguin Classics edition there is an appendix 'How I Came to Write Fiction' written by George Eliot and dated Dec 6 1857 in which she describes the background to this book. That and the introduction by David Lodge proved enormously interesting in helping to portray how the book took shape. It details what suggestions the publisher, Blackwood made when the stories were sent to him to be published in his magazine and how Eliot responded to his criticism.
The religious themes of the stories may not be of any great interest to the modern reader although I understand they were 'hot topics' in their day but the stories are mainly well-written. Already Eliot is showing an ability to create and describe life in a small industrial town and people it with an array of believable characters from the pauper in the workhouse to the country knight in the manor house.
Some of the writing is over-sentimental and melodramatic but that was very much the fashion of the time. There are flashes of brilliance and some humour amongst all the angst. I thought the weakest of the novellas was 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story'. The main characters were boring, the hero too good to be true and the love interest not at all lovable but petulant and ill-tempered. Lots of animal imagery, I didn't count how many times Caterina was compared to a bird or a timid animal or a monkey but it was far too much and detracted from the narrative. An experienced George Eliot would have handled it more skilfully.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the development of a great novelist and to any admirer of Eliot who, like me,has read all of her other books but overlooked this one.

[Richard Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scenes of a Clerical Life was Eliot’s first piece of creative writing, and it has the well-drawn characters, the psychological insights, the wit, the sympathy, and the evocation of the English countryside and rural life that came to a fuller fruition in Middlemarch. It also has a touch of the Gothic, a style that the Victorians loved.

After it was published in 1857 Dickens wrote to George Eliot, who was not then know to be a woman:

“I am (I presume) bound to adopt the name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I can suggest no better one: but I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seemed to me such womanly touches in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began.”

I'm so wrapped up with the Victorians, not least through reading this book, that I wrote a blog about it:

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, interesting book consisting of two novellas and a short novel. All three stories concerns clergymen in Warwickshire, England in the 1850s. I enjoyed each story. The characters are well developed and each story has an interesting plot.

George Eliot and Victorian literature fans should find this book a very satisfying reading experience.

This book was first published in 1857.

[Emmanuel Soria · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5*
Me encantaron los tres relatos que componen este volumen. "El arrepentimiento de Janet" me pareció espectacular. Costumbrismo con una crítica sutil pero a la vez despiadada a muchos usos y costumbres de la época. Por momentos me recordaba a la moralidad de Jane Austen pero por momentos más ácida.
Mary Ann Evans se convertido en una de mis favoritas.

[Jenny Cooke (Bookish Shenanigans) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always interesting to see where a great author started but this is not her best. Some great characters and pieces of writing but a little slow at the beginning of each story.

[Misha · Rating 4 out of 5]

“They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people - many of them - bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys; their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they have mourned over their irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their very insignificance, - in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they share?”

Eliot’s first work and not my favorite of hers, though it’s hard when one’s favorite of hers is the greatest English novel of all time. There are many hints of the provincial life to come in these pages, like the above quote for instance, which reminds of “unvisited tombs.”

Though her secular side is least relatable to me, and the three separate stories at times disjointed, the characteristic paragraph enders of a sentence so simple and yet profound, summing up the human condition are all present here. A must read for GE lovers, a good read for not.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't have stuck with this if it weren't for the author. Because I love George Eliot's later books, I figured these 3 short stories would be worth reading even if they started out slow and ended up melodramatic and not quite believable. (How can people so conveniently, or unexpectedly, die?) I love George Eliot's insights and writing, and I enjoyed reading her first published work. She definitely matured and improved as a writer by the time she wrote Silas Marner and Middlemarch!

A taste of George Eliot's wisdom:

“Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.”

“We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence.”

Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

[Most people] are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. … Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.

The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simply beautiful stories in a prose style that is both dense and poetic but also extremely readable.

The first story of Amos Barton is sort of like a reverse Madame Bovary, where it's a sort of boring, unfulfilling marriage and the woman wants more, but she stays by him. For some reason near the end of it I was holding back tears, even though the scene wasn't particularly sad or shocking or moving, just something about the humanity of it got to me.

The second story of Mr Gilfil is even better, though the ending plot twist is a bit "ehhh". The story's setup and structure is just flawless though, it's extremely easy to be pictured in your mind as a TV series.

The final story of Janet is probably the most complicated and dense. It's first part is basically long, confusing, religious discussions which slowly lead in to the plot of competing religious doctrines forcing the town in to two camps, and then the stage is set. It's pretty difficult to follow unless you have a strong grasp of the religious landscape of country towns in England from 1790 to 1830 (read: very few people), but once that's out of the way it's pretty smooth sailing.

In short, this book was solid in every aspect.

[Mark Lisac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three tenuously linked novellas are grouped into one volume here. Only the first ("Amos Barton") delivers the promise that eventually led to Eliot's (Mary Anne Evans's) masterpiece, "Middlemarch." All three stories blend a more tart version of Jane Austen's observations of small-town society in England in the early 19th century with Charles Dickens's taste for an often exaggerated sentimentality. The first nicely balances the two impulses and offers naturalistic writing along with a fairly clean story line. The next two take the reader into thick swamps of sentimentality and moralizing, too often stretching pathos into bathos, and tightly wrapping plots into acceptable Victorian norms. The third story ("Janet's Repentance") does, however, include an interesting historical view of religious conflicts in small communities of the time, as well as a surprising account of the psychological factors at play in spousal abuse. Eliot's dry humour and acute perceptions are generally on display throughout. The whole book is interesting, but a bit of a chore to get through, even if you accept a prose style that's stilted by today's standards.

[Ted Dettweiler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this classic writer as a result of a scene from the latest CBC version of Anne of Green Gables in which Aunt Josephine gives Anne a book by George Eliot. George Eliot was a woman writing under a pseudonym. Published in 1857 serially in a magazine, the success of "Scenes of Clerical Life" encouraged the writer to pursue her career. Lucy Maud Montgomery, born in 1874 would no doubt have been influenced by the stories that George Eliot artfully describes to us.

The third, and longest story of this book, "Janet's Repentance" brought the Methodist (dissenting sects) history of that era to life for me. George Eliot was well familiar with the Methodists as she has been described as having lived an "earnestly Evangelical girlhood". It is a thoroughly sympathetic and artful portrayal of a woman who comes under Methodist influence in the early 19th century. To me, it brought a historical period that I have lately been reading in to life. This is also important reading in a study of the role of women in that era.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eliot's earliest attempt at fiction, this comprises three novellas, "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story", and "Janet's Repentance". I found the novellas a little on the melodramatic side (particularly the latter two) compared to her later works, but they show Eliot's developing artistry as a writer of fiction: subtle characterization, quiet humor, and most of all, interest in searching out and presenting truths about humanity. Scenes of Clerical Life wouldn't be my first recommendation for a reader new to Eliot, but for those who have already read her more mature works, Scenes is well worth reading.

[Christe · Rating 2 out of 5]

If somehow you missed reading this -- the first fiction ever published by George Eliot -- then don't feel you must rush out and get it. It is distinctly early Eliot; she had not hit her stride. These four novellas veer into romanticism and Dickensian sentimentality all too often. But it is George Eliot nonetheless -- the wise voice, the dry humor, the keen observation of human nature and frailty -- it is all there, springing out sometimes when you least expect it. So I am glad to have read this, no matter its faults....

[Carol Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book on my bookshelves, probably having bought it on impulse at a used book sale. In trying to finally read all the unread books on those shelves, I found this to be unexpectedly engaging. It was George Eliot's first novel, and proves to be not only witty and entertaining, if sometimes on the melodramatic side, but also surprisingly modern. Her treatment of domestic abuse and alcoholism show compassion and understanding that would fit the 21st century. And discussions of sectarianism and prejudice are quite timely too.

[Kate Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great to be able to read these shorter works by George Eliot. I found myself especially struck by her humor in this collection.

4 stars to Amos Barton
3 stars to The Love Story of Mr. Gilfil
4 stars to Janet's Repentance