Silas Marner

“Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.”


An outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, Silas Marner is notable for its strong realism and its sophisticated treatment of a variety of issues ranging from religion to industrialization to community.


Silas Marner, a weaver, is an eager and promising young member of a Puritan religious community, Lantern Yard. Marner's supposed best friend, Willam Dane, frames him for the theft of a pouch of coins. Marner suffers from cataleptic fits which leave him as insensible as stone and vulnerable to Dane's frame-up. The community of Lantern Yard draws lots to determine Marner's guilt or innocence in the crime. After the lots proclaim Marner guilty, he flees from Lantern Yard, utterly crushed, leaving behind his faith in God and in humankind.


Eliot’s third novel is a powerful and moving tale about one man’s journey from exile and loneliness to the warmth and joy of the family. Both a rich moral drama and an evocative reading experience, Silas Marner remains one of Eliot's best-loved works.


Marner is presented here with a selection of classic illustrations spanning several editions of the novels.