George Eliot’sVictorian masterpiece:amagnificent portrait of a provincial town and its inhabitants

George Eliots novel,Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life,explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modernchanges. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building ofrailroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientificapproaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behindrespectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are playedout in the complexly portrayed central characters of the novelthe idealisticDorothea Brooke; the ambitious Dr. Lydgate; the spendthrift Fred Vincy; and thesteadfast Mary Garth. The appearance of two outsiders further disrupts thetowns equilibriumWill Ladislaw, the spirited nephew of Dorotheas husband,the Rev. Edward Casaubon, and the sinister John Raffles, who threatens to exposethe hidden past of one of the towns elite.MiddlemarchdisplaysGeorge Eliots clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up inthe mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge.This Penguin Classics editionuses the second edition of 1874 and features an introduction and notes byEliot-biographer Rosemary Ashton. In her introduction, Ashton discusses themesof social change inMiddlemarch, and examines the novel as animaginative embodiment of Eliot’s humanist beliefs.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher ofclassic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than1,500titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the bestworks throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trusttheseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions andnotes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslationsby award-winning translators.

About the Author

George Eliot(Mary Ann Evans Cross) was born onNovember 22, 1819 at Arbury Farm, Warwickshire, England. She received anordinary education and, upon leaving school at the age of sixteen, embarked ona program of independent study to further her intellectual growth. In 1841 shemoved with her father to Coventry, where the influences of skeptics andrationalists swayed her from an intense religious devoutness to an eventualbreak with the church. The death of her father in 1849 left her with a smalllegacy and the freedom to pursue her literary inclinations. In 1851 she becamethe assistant editor of theWestminster Review, a position she heldfor three years. In 1854 came the fated meeting with George Henry Lewes, thegifted editor ofThe Leader, who was to become her adviser andcompanion for the next twenty-four years. Her first book,Scenes of aClerical Life(1858), was followed byAdam Bede(1859),TheMill on the Floss(1860),Silas Marner(1861), andMiddlemarch(1872).The death of Lewes, in 1878, left her stricken and lonely. On May 6, 1880, shemarried John Cross, a friend of long standing, and after a brief illness shedied on December 22 of that year, in London.

Rosemary Ashton, Professor of English Literature at University College,London, is the editor of the Penguin Classics edition ofMiddlemarch.