Middlemarch (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) [Paperback]

George Eliot (Author), Lynne Sharon Schwartz (Introduction), Megan McDaniel (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003 | Series: Barnes & Noble Classics

Middlemarch, 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:

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

 

Often called the greatest nineteenth-century British novelist, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) created in Middlemarch a vast panorama of life in a provincial Midlands town. At the story’s center stands the intellectual and idealistic Dorothea Brooke—a character who in many ways resembles Eliot herself. But the very qualities that set Dorothea apart from the materialistic, mean-spirited society around her also lead her into a disastrous marriage with a man she mistakes for her soul mate. In a parallel story, young doctor Tertius Lydgate, who is equally idealistic, falls in love with the pretty but vain and superficial Rosamund Vincy, whom he marries to his ruin.

Eliot surrounds her main figures with a gallery of characters drawn from every social class, from laborers and shopkeepers to the rising middle class to members of the wealthy, landed gentry. Together they form an extraordinarily rich and precisely detailed portrait of English provincial life in the 1830s. But Dorothea’s and Lydgate’s struggles to retain their moral integrity in the midst of temptation and tragedy remind us that their world is very much like our own. Strikingly modern in its painful ironies and psychological insight, Middlemarch was pivotal in the shaping of twentieth-century literary realism.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of fourteen books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, including the novels Disturbances in the Field, Leaving Brooklyn, and In the Family Way, and the memoir Ruined by Reading. Her poetry collection In Solitary and her translation of A Place to Live: Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg appeared in 2002.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Though not out of print, this popular title is being added to the venerable "Modern Library" line to coincide with a PBS Masterpiece Theatre miniseries. Along with the full text, this edition includes an introduction by A.S. Byatt. All that for $15 makes this a bargain.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"No Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative."
--V. S. Pritchett


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 848 pages
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593080239
• ISBN-13: 978-1593080235
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (212 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born Mary Ann Evans, Victorian novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) is the author of a number of remarkable works, including the masterpiece Middlemarch.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#81 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#81 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

204 of 212 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, compelling book January 15, 2010

By Shelby Miller

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I took up this book because it was on a booklist of the 100 best books written, and I have to agree. It took awhile to get into it because there's a great deal of expository writing at the beginning, but stick with it and you'll be introduced to some fascinating characters in the town of Middlemarch.

Dorothea Brooke is a young woman about to take a much older husband, determined to find purpose in her life by assisting him with his life's work, a book which is to a definitive guide to all the mythologies of the world. When she begins to suspect her husband's work is little more than empty piffle, how will she find her way?

Mr. Lydgate is a hotshot young physician determined to do great works from the small town of Middlemarch. Thwarted by small town suspicion and politics, and increasingly saddled by debt incurred by a pretty young wife, how will he cope as his life's dream slips away?

Fred Vincy is the son of a town merchant determined to see him made a gentleman. He's paid for Fred to recieve a gentleman's education at Oxford with the intention that Fred will join the Church. Fred knows the Church isn't for him, but isn't sure what else to do, nor how to tell his father his education was for naught.

These are just three of a huge cast of characters, all of them fascinating in their own way as their lives intersect. The book feels more like a documentary than a novel, and you grow to feel as if the characters could be your own friends and neighbors. Highly recommended, I know this is going to be one of my favorite books.

237 of 253 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My opinion? This is the greatest novel written in English August 29, 2001

By Joanna Daneman #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Yes, that is a strong statement, but I believe Middlemarch to be the best novel written in English. And English is a rich language, overflowing with worthy works from both sides of the Atlantic, India and beyond. The only novel as a close contender on my list is Jane Eyre, with its fearsome symmetry and romantic passion.
George Eliot has been the bane of students everywhere who suffer reading Silas Marner in high school. But later on, you, like me, may develop a taste for the classics and this book will reward you richly.
The story is about Dorothea, a young, idealist woman, born to a good family with a modest fortune of her own. She is a prime catch on the wife market--money, family name, good looks. Her parents are deceased and her friends and uncle seek to pair her up with a local baron as the ideal mate. But Dorothea, bookish, religious and dreamy, has other ideas. She chooses, instead, a superannuated cleric who finally decides to marry as he feels mortality and ill health upon him. Casaubon, the vicar of a nearby rural church is a good match except....he's old, ugly and what the heck is he doing marrying such a young beauty. But Dorothea, who's imagining a sort of superior father figure who could "teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it" wakes up to far less than a reality of marital bliss. And there's an added complication created by her unworthy husband that has dire consequences for the young Dorothea.
The subsequent examination of marriage as a partnership in hell is written with stunning modernity. Eliot not only creates the disastrous marriage of Dorothea to Casaubon, but also pairs, as a comparison, Lydgate, a doctor and his frivolous, vain, uncaring wife. The relationship of marriage to society is never more well drawn, but the internal suffering of people trapped in loveless marriage is written with sympathy and cunning insight. Eliot herself had a live-in relationship with Henry Lewes, who could not divorce his wife. She undoubtedly wrote from personal experience. The insight into human nature, such as jealousy, disappointment, recrimination, loss of trust and a feeling of desperation are themes that anyone who has ever been in a relationship will recognize as truth. If you find classic literature hard going, watch the mini-series created based on the book. Then, knowing the general plot, you might enjoy the structure and language of the novel more.

82 of 85 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly funny and penetrating! January 10, 2000

By Margaret Fiore

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I have had a copy of this book on my shelf for years without reading it. It was so very thick, the print so small, the pages so thin! It looked dauntingly long and dull.

But when I finally picked it up out of a sense of obligation (after all, I majored in English, and it is a highly acclaimed classic) I was amazed to find myself laughing out loud on the very first page!

Dorothea, Eliot's heroine, is SO very earnest, SO idealistic and ardent! She would never be so tawdry as to fuss with her hair and dress, or wear (gasp!) jewelry in public! She is interested only in bettering the lives of the poor in their neighborhood (you could visualize her at the fore of a modern anti-war protest). But when her sister draws her into trying on their mother's old jewelry, the pure beauty of an emerald ring inspires her to decisively choose it as her own. And she stubbbornly ignores any inconsistency between that decision and her ideals.

But her idealism traps her into marriage with a man who is not at all what she believes. She sees him as a paragon of learning, questing the seas of knowledge with fearless curiousity. In actuality, he turns out to be a cautious and small-minded scholar, drily obsessed with minor points of criticism on others works. Poor Dorothea strives to find ways to hold constant in her love in the face of ugly truth. And when she meets young Will Ladislaw, a man of similar idealism and energy, she fights to stay on her moral high ground. Thank goodness the dry old scholar dies! But even after death, he manages to poison the possibility of Dorothea and Will ever making a life together.

Around this couple swarm their relatives and acquaintances, and others quests for their best lives. Each couple and each character is amusing and absorbing in their own way.

Eliot's characters are introduced and drawn so very well that each personality is fully believable and real. But beyond that, Eliot looks at all of them, the best and the worst, from a viewpoint of loving and gentle amusement. Her pithy comments are hilarious, but never malicious. She draws the reader into her own frame of mind, and invites us to look at the variety of our fellow humans with compassion and laughter.

In spite of its length, and several dizzy plunges into despair, this is a light and lively story, very readable and heartwarming.