Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life (1871–72) is George Eliot's masterpiece, often called the greatest novel in English. Set in a Midlands town around 1830, at the time of the Reform Act and the coming of the railways, it interweaves the lives of an entire community, above all those of the idealistic Dorothea Brooke and the ambitious young doctor Tertius Lydgate.
The story
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman eager to do good, marries the elderly scholar Edward Casaubon, hoping to help him with his great work, and discovers that it is sterile and that her husband is jealous, particularly of his young cousin, Will Ladislaw.
At the same time, Tertius Lydgate, a doctor with plans to reform medicine, marries the pretty and self-centred Rosamond Vincy and sinks into debt. Their stories cross those of Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, of the banker Bulstrode, whose respectable life hides a secret, and of many other inhabitants of the town.
Two stories joined
George Eliot began a novel called Middlemarch in 1869, centred on Lydgate, and separately in 1870 a story called Miss Brooke. Early in 1871 she realised that the two could form a single book, which grew into her longest and most ambitious work.
Her partner, George Henry Lewes, proposed to the publisher John Blackwood an unusual format: eight books issued every two months, from December 1871, and then monthly at the end, until December 1872. The novel then appeared in four volumes.
A novel for grown-up people
The narrator's wise and ironic voice comments on the characters with sympathy, showing how each person's choices are shaped by circumstances and by the community. The novel's realism and psychological depth have made it a reference for later writers.
Virginia Woolf praised it as one of the few English novels written for grown-up people, and in 2015 a BBC poll of critics from around the world named it the greatest British novel.
Anecdotes
Emily Dickinson's verdict
When her cousins asked what she thought of Middlemarch, the American poet Emily Dickinson replied that it was like asking what she thought of glory, and added that the mysteries of human nature surpassed the mysteries of redemption.
Saint Theresa
The novel opens with a short Prelude about Saint Teresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who founded convents. Eliot uses her as the image of a woman with a great nature and great aspirations, and suggests that many later Theresas found no outlet for theirs.
Frequently asked questions
When was Middlemarch published?
In eight parts, from December 1871 to December 1872, then in four volumes.
When is Middlemarch set?
Between 1829 and 1832, in a fictional Midlands town, at the time of the first Reform Act.
Who are the main characters of Middlemarch?
Dorothea Brooke, Edward Casaubon, Will Ladislaw, Tertius Lydgate, Rosamond Vincy, Fred Vincy, Mary Garth and the banker Bulstrode.