George Eliot’s
beloved masterpiece in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with a
foreword by Rebecca Mead, author of the bestselling memoir My Life in
Middlemarch
A triumph of realist
fiction, George Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of
sweeping change. The proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and
scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against
this backdrop, the quiet drama of ordinary lives is played out by the
novel’s complexly portrayed characters—until the arrival of two
outsiders further disrupts the town’s equilibrium. Every bit as
powerful and perceptive in our time as it was in the Victorian era,
Middlemarch displays George Eliot’s clear-eyed yet humane
understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of
self-knowledge.
In this elegant
Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, Rebecca Mead introduces the novel
that shaped her life and reflects on its joys and its timeless
relevance.