Silas Marner

Cast out of his religious community on a false charge and betrayed by his dearest friend, the linen-weaver Silas Marner withdraws to the quiet village of Raveloe and shrinks into a solitary life, loving nothing but the gold he hoards beneath his cottage floor. When the gold is stolen, he is left with nothing at all.

Then, on a snowy New Year’s night, a golden-haired child wanders through his open door and falls asleep at his hearth, her mother lying dead in the snow outside. Silas takes the child for his own and names her Eppie, and the daily work of loving her slowly draws the broken man back into the human world he had renounced — even as the well-born Godfrey Cass guards the secret that the foundling is his own abandoned daughter.

First published in 1861, Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is the most compact and perfectly shaped of George Eliot’s novels — part folk legend, part searching realism — a story of how hoarded gold is exchanged for living love, and of an England quietly passing away. It builds to Eppie’s unforgettable choice between the poor man who reared her and the rich one who gave her up.

This edition pairs the complete text with an editor’s foreword on the novel’s composition and meaning, a biographical note, a guide to further reading, and questions for reflection.