Drop Cap #5
Penguin Classics
December 2012
On Sale: November 28, 2012
Featuring: Dorothea Brooke; Dr. Lydgate; Fred Vincy
912 pages ISBN: 0143123815 EAN: 9780143123811 Hardcover (reprint) Add to Wish List
E is for Eliot. Considered one the masterpieces of realist fiction, George Eliotβs novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building of railroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientific approaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behind respectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are played out in the complexly portrayed central characters of the novelβthe idealistic Dorothea Brooke; the ambitious Dr. Lydgate; the spendthrift Fred Vincy; and the steadfast Mary Garth. The appearance of two outsiders further disrupts the townβs equilibriumβWill Ladislaw, the spirited nephew of Dorotheaβs husband, the Rev. Edward Casaubon, and the sinister John Raffles, who threatens to expose the hidden past of one of the townβs elite. Middlemarch displays George Eliotβs clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge.
© 2003-2026