by David Carroll (Editor), George Eliot (Author), Felicia Bonaparte (Contributor), George Eliot (Author), Felicia Bonaparte (Contributor), David Carroll (Editor), George Eliot (Author)
Writing at the very moment when the foundations of Western thought were being challenged and undermined, George Eliot fashions in Middlemarch (1871-2) the quintessential Victorian novel, a concept of life and society free from the dogma of the past yet able to confront the scepticism that was taking over the age. In a panoramic sweep of English life during thr years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Eliot explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, idealistic but naive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar: Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician: the passionate artist Will Ladislaw: and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein. Felicia Bonaparte has provided a new Introduction for this updated edition, the text of which is taken from David Carroll's Clarendon Middlemarch (1986), the first critical edition.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 864
Edition: New
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
Published: 05 Mar 1998
ISBN 10: 0192834029
ISBN 13: 9780192834027
Prizes: Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Shortlisted for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003.
Like the other World's Classics, this is a good text in a well-designed format, with adequate but unobtrusive editorial aids and introductions, biographical information, notes--at a fair price. --Robert D. Beckett, Southwest Missouri State University