George Eliot

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother,...

Set in a fictional Midlands town, the novel chronicles nineteenth-century English provincial life through its precisely delineated characters, weaving many stories into one richly textured tapestry.

The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who cant help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to read The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealingof Eliots sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling.

Deronda, a high-minded young man searching for his path in life, finds himself drawn by a series of dramatic encounters into two contrasting worlds: the English country-house life of Gwendolen Harleth, a high-spirited beauty trapped in an oppressive marriage, and the very different lives of a poor Jewish girl, Mirah, and her family. As Deronda uncovers the long-hidden secret of his own parentage, Eliot's moving and suspenseful narrative opens up a...

Taking place in the years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Middlemarch 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...

Presents George Eliot's 1862 novel about Romola, a woman who, having grown up subservient to her scholar-father, and endured an unhappy marriage, has a passionate intellectual and spiritual awakening in Renaissance Florence.

Published in 1879, this is Eliot's last completed work, and perhaps her most underrated. It consists of a series of essays told by a nameless English bachelor. Though critics harshly judged the work as "ponderous and moralizing" when it was published, today's readers will recognize Eliot's keen intelligence, sharp wit, and intriguing insights in such essays as "A Too Deferential Man," "A Political Molecule," and "Only Temper."

Excerpt: "Since the death of George Eliot much public curiosity has been excited by the repeated allusions to, and quotations from, her contributions to periodical literature, and a leading newspaper gives expression to a general wish when it says that "this series of striking essays ought to be collected and reprinted, both because of substantive worth and because of the light they throw on the author's literary canons and predilections." In fact,...

Silas Marner and Two Short Stories, by George Eliot, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

George Eliot, a pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, publishing seven major novels and several translations during her career. The Selected Works of George Eliot includes all seven of the author's novels: Adam Bede, The Lifted Veil, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda.