George Eliot's 1871 novel follows the intersecting lives of residents in the fictional English town of Middlemarch during the 1830s. The story weaves together multiple plotlines centered on idealistic Dorothea Brooke and ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate as they navigate marriage, politics, and social change in provincial Victorian society.
Since I can do no good because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near it. —_The Maid’s Tragedy:_ BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day’s newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from h…Continue reading →
Born Mary Ann Evans in 1819, this brilliant Victorian novelist adopted a male pseudonym to ensure her work received serious consideration. Her psychologically complex novels like Middlemarch and Silas Marner revolutionized English literature by exploring moral dilemmas with unprecedented depth and realism, establishing her as one of literature's greatest voices. All works by George Eliot →
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