Subtitled ‘A Study of Provincial Life’, George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch chronicles the titular nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of political and social change.
Eliot explores the upheaval brought about by these transformations through their impact on the lives of a richly varied cast of characters, including the pious young Dorothea Brooke, her suitor the Reverend Edward Casaubon, the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate, and the mysterious schemer John Raffles.
About the Author
Mary Ann (Marian) Evans, better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes. They lived together as man and wife, but Lewes was unable to divorce his wife from his failed marriage.
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