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Middlemarch (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

George Eliot , David Carroll , Felicia Bonaparte
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (212 customer reviews)

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Book Description

September 1, 2008 Oxford World's Classics
This panoramic work--considered the finest novel in English by many critics--offers a complex look at English provincial life at a crucial historical moment, and, at the same time, dramatizes and explores some of the most potent myths of Victorian literature.

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 näive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar: Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician: the passionate artist Will Ladislaw: and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein.

Felicia Bonaparte has provided a new Introduction for this updated edition, the text of which is taken from David Carroll's Clarendon Middlemarch (1986), the first critical edition.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Frequently Bought Together

Middlemarch (Oxford World's Classics) + Bleak House (Wordsworth Classics) (Wadsworth Collection) + Wuthering Heights (Dover Thrift Editions)
Price for all three: $15.90

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 904 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Reissue edition (September 1, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0199536759
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199536757
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.4 x 7.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 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: #64,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

10 years after reading the novel, I am still finding new things to admire. Times Higher Education Supplement

Product Details

  • Paperback: 904 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Reissue edition (September 1, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0199536759
  • ISBN-13: 978-0199536757
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.4 x 7.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 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: #64,365 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
206 of 214 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, compelling book January 15, 2010
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.
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241 of 257 people found the following review helpful
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.
... Read more ›
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82 of 85 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly funny and penetrating! January 10, 2000
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....

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. Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy of reading
Tho the 881 pages seemed unending, the prose invited persistence. The characters walked out of the pages as surely as if they were visiting Downton Abbey! Read more
Published 1 month ago by J H
3.0 out of 5 stars Middlemarch- a brilliant 19th-century novel
The Penguin Classics edition of Middlemarch [like the Oxford World Classics edition] has disappointingly few notes, and those there are seem very sketchy. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sara Walker
5.0 out of 5 stars MIDDLEMARCH
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. I have the DVD series in my collection which I've have watched many times, and it follows the book almost to the letter.
Published 2 months ago by Thomas J. Monahan
5.0 out of 5 stars Love, Money, Marriage, and Scandal
A vast cast of characters in an English town and its surrounding countryside cope with the challenges of love and marriage, as well as politics, propriety, and money. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Heidi
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic
Virginia Woolf said this was one of the greatest novels. I agree.
It has everything, politics, romance, class, aesthetics, progress.
Published 3 months ago by Diana Linda Lamond
4.0 out of 5 stars Finally!
After not finishing this book in college -- more than 30 years ago -- I have conquered Eliot's Middlemarch. And, although it took me months, I'm glad I made the effort.
Published 3 months ago by Brian McCann
5.0 out of 5 stars Middlemarch
A delicious insight into gaskells england, simply amazing, and a book you must read again and again. I also would recommend.the mill on the floss
Published 3 months ago by Treen6
3.0 out of 5 stars Annoying.
This version of Middlemarch did not have all of the same punctuation as the Original Edition and I was very annoyed at some points trying to figure out what a certain character... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Amanda Glasgo
5.0 out of 5 stars Middlemarch
This is my all time favorite novel. Eliot perfectly captures, the internal argument we carry within ourselves. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Jewel
3.0 out of 5 stars characterization is fantastic but too much sermonizing
Certainly a classic and, these very complex and well developed characters will stick with you for some time to come. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Jody Schroeder
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