Middlemarch: Miss Brooke

Middlemarch (8 volumes) #1

by George Eliot, Shane Fournier (Illustrator)

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

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First 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

[That Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

This book hasn't blown my mind just yet, but there are 7 more volumes, so I am not too worried. The characters seem interesting, I am curious to see more of them.

[McKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, was so excited I special ordered it from an interlibrary loan in Gwinnett County. I don't have a problem with authors from that time period and I enjoy Shelley, Austen, and Alcott. But I couldn't immerse myself in the observational writing. Each description lasted paragraphs and nothing happened. Glad I tried it, not for me.

[Devanshi Mehta · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not find it in me continue reading 7 other volumes of this stuff. There was too much unnecessary thinking written down. Too much contemplation. Very little dialogue and action. What little plot there was was also boring.

[Enikő Csősz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Az új fordítás egy felüdülés volt. Különt tetszett, hogy Dorothea ennyire irritált, mert ez is csak azt mutatta, hogy a karaktereknek van személyiségük és nem csak papírra vetett szavakból állnak.

[Ava Boyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not find it in me to continue reading another 7 volumes of this. There was too much contemplation & very little dialogue and action. What little plot there was was also boring.