Old and Young

Middlemarch (8 volumes) #2

by George Eliot

The first edition of Middlemarch was published in eight separate books, two to a volume, in an experiment suggested by Eliot's partner George Henry Lewes and embraced by her publisher William Blackwood. This is the first book.

Genres: Fiction

195 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1871

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

[Max Bodach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amorous troubles in Rome? What is this, la dolce vita?

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second half of this begins to really carry the water.

[Raquel Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some political things going on that I didn’t entirely understand and had to read cliff notes…