Middlemarch

George Eliot's Middlemarch is a rich, many-layered novel about a whole community and the private lives within it. Set in the fictional Midlands town of Middlemarch during the years around the first Reform Bill, it follows the intersecting fortunes of Dorothea Brooke, an idealistic young woman; Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious doctor; and a wide circle of families, clergy, and tradespeople. Their choices in love, work, and money are shaped by gossip, inheritance, and the slow pressure of social change.

Eliot writes with deep sympathy and sharp wit about ordinary people who long to do something great and often fall short. The novel is famous for its psychological insight, its generous humor, and its unflinching look at disappointment and compromise. Readers who enjoy character-driven classics, nineteenth-century English life, and moral questions that still feel urgent will find much to savor here.

This edition contains the complete text of Middlemarch, arranged in its original eight books from the Prelude through Sunset and Sunrise. It also includes a new introduction for first-time readers, a character guide to the principal figures, a summary of the story, an exploration of major themes, a glossary of period words and phrases, and twelve discussion questions for book clubs and students.