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George Eliot

George Eliot

  • George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil was first published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1859 and has now become one of the author’s most widely read and critically discussed stories. Told from the point of view of a young, egocentric, and morbid clairvoyant man, Latimer, it is a dark fantasy portrait of an artist whose visionary powers merely blight his life. The story reflected the scientific interest of the time in the physiology of the brain, mesmerism, phrenology, and experiments in revivification. It also is a reflection of the author’s moral philosophy.

    The Lifted Veil is a significant part of the Victorian tradition of horror fiction, along with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

  • “If a woman really believes herself to be a lower kind of being, she should place herself in subjection….If not, let her show her power of choosing something better.” This is the challenge thrown down to George Eliot’s heroine, Esther Lyon, who dreams of marrying into a life of refinement. But as she struggles to make her choice between two men, Esther finds her values challenged.

    Felix Holt is a respectably educated young man who has relinquished opportunity for life as an artisan. An idealist, he burns to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans. Contrasted with Holt is the intelligent heir Harold Transome, whose political ambitions are a matter of business. Plot twists involving lines of inheritance and legitimacy complicate the love triangle.

  • George Eliot's brilliant fiction debut contains three stories from the lives of clergymen, with the aim of disclosing the value hidden in the commonplace.

    "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton" portrays a character who is hard to like and generally despised—until his suffering shocks others into fellowship and sympathy.

    In "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," young Caterina is courted by two opposite men: Wybrow, who is capable of loving only himself, and Mr. Gilfil, whose love is selfless.

    "Janet's Repentance" recounts a conversion from sinfulness to righteousness, achieved through the selfless endeavors of an evangelical clergyman.        

    Written more than a decade after her break with the Christian faith, these tales represent Eliot's search for a "religion of humanity" compatible with the best qualities of Christianity.

  • Dorothea Brooke is a thoughtful and idealistic young woman determined to make a difference with her life. Enamored of a man whom she believes is setting this example, she unwittingly traps herself into a loveless marriage.

    Her parallel is Tertius Lydgate, a visionary young doctor from the city, whose passionate ambition to spread the new science of medicine is complicated by his love for the wrong woman.

    Featuring a panoply of complex, brilliantly drawn characters from every walk of life, George Eliot's masterpiece is a rich and teeming portrait of provincial life in Victorian England. Yet her characters' struggles to retain their moral integrity in the midst of temptation and tragedy are strikingly modern in their painful ironies.

    The incomparable psychological insight of Middlemarch was pivotal in the shaping of twentieth-century literary realism.

  • "There is no book of mine about which I more thoroughly feel that I swear by every sentence as having been written with my best blood." Thus wrote George Eliot about Romola, the book which is central in her career as a novelist and amongst her most colorful, fluent, and persuasive works.

    Set in Florence in 1492, a time of great political and religious turmoil, Eliot's novel blends vivid fictional characters with historical figures such as Savonarola, Machiavelli, and the Medicis. When Romola, the virtuous daughter of a blind scholar, marries Tito Melema, a charismatic young Greek, she is bound to a man whose escalating betrayals threaten to destroy all that she holds dear. Profoundly inspired by Savonarola's teachings, then crushed by the religious leader's ultimate failure, Romola finds her salvation in noble self-sacrifice.

  • One of the masterpieces of English literature, Daniel Deronda tells the intertwined stories of two different characters as they each come to discover of the truth of their natures.

    Gwendolen Harleth is the high-spirited beauty of an impoverished upper-class family. In order to restore their fortunes, she unwittingly traps herself in an oppressive marriage. She turns for solace and guidance to the high-minded young Daniel Deronda, the adopted son of an aristocratic Englishman, who is searching for his own path in life. But when Deronda rescues a poor Jewish girl from drowning, he discovers a world of Jewish culture previously unknown to him. When he finally uncovers the long-hidden secret of his own parentage, he must confront his true identity and destiny.

  • George Eliot's first full-length novel is the moving, realistic portrait of three people troubled by unwise love.

    Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, who delights only in her baubles—and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand.

    Betrayed by their innocence, both Adam and Hetty allow their foolish hearts to trap them in a triangle of seduction, murder, and retribution. Only in the lovely Dinah Morris, a preacher, does Adam find his redemption.

    Addressing questions of morality and the role of women in society, Adam Bedeexplores the dangers of relying on religious and social norms to govern destructive desires.

  • Silas Marner, a gentle linen weaver, is framed by his best friend for a heinous theft. Exiled from his small community, Marner retreats into bitter and miserly reclusion, caring only for the gold he receives for his work. When his small treasure horde is stolen, Marner feels betrayed by life yet again—until one fateful New Year's Eve, an abandoned golden-haired child appears mysteriously on his doorstep. Through his unselfish love for this child, Marner's heart reawakens to spiritual rebirth and true happiness. George Eliot shows how good character is rewarded in this ageless, heartwarming novel of redemption.

    Though this story originally appeared in 1861, its themes and ideas are timeless.

  • Set in nineteenth-century England, this great novel of domestic realism sympathetically portrays a young woman’s vain efforts to adapt to her provincial world.

    Maggie Tulliver, whose father owns a mill perched on the banks of the River Floss, is intelligent and imaginative beyond the understanding of her community, her relatives, and particularly her brother, Tom. Despite their opposite temperaments, Maggie and Tom are united by a strong bond. But this bond suffers when Tom’s sense of family honor leads him to forbid her to associate with the one friend who appreciates her intelligence and imagination. Later, when Maggie falls in love with the handsome and passionate fiancé of her cousin and is caught in a compromising situation, she fears her relationship with Tom may never recover.