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Middlemarch
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Middlemarch (1871) (edit title/settings)

by George Eliot (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Vast and crowded, rich in irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character, with two of the era's most enduring characters, Dorothea Brooke, trapped in a loveless marriage, and Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor.

Summary edit see section history

Dorothea wastes her youth on a creepy, elderly scholar. Lydgate marries the beautiful but self-absorbed Rosamund. George Eliot's characters make terrible mistakes, but we never lose empathy with them.

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”
  • “One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!”
  • “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
  • “There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.”
  • “But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
  • “She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was.”
  • “But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.”
  • “With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.”
  • “"Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she had trusted – who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting the dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life; and now, with a full consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched out her arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness was a parting vision; she discovered her passion to herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair."”
  • “Indeed she herself was accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty's intentions about families.”
  • “You don’t understand women. They don’t admire you half so much as you admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters that she married me for my ugliness - it was so various and amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence.”
    Mr. Cadwallader
Show all 11 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Time Magazine's 10 Greatest Books of All Time. (authoritative list)
This book is in Hopeless Romantic. (community list)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This book is in Random Synapses: 100 Book Reading Challenge (2011). (community list)
This book is in Modern Library Classics. (publisher edition list)
This book is in Penguin Classics. (publisher edition list)
This book is in Penguin's Top 100 Classics. (authoritative list)
This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)
This is book 201012 of 31 in The Bibliophile Club - Monthly Selected Reads. (community list)
This is book 11 of 11 in The Bibliophile Club - Selected Reads of 2010. (community list)
This is book 13 of 93 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)
This is book 27 of 200 in BBC 'Big Read' Top 200 Novels, 2003. (authoritative list)
This is book 20 of 95 in Telegraph Top 100 Books, 2008. (authoritative list)
This is book 8 of 91 in The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time, 2004. (authoritative list)
This book is in Big Fat Books. (community list)
This is book 27 of 82 in BBC "Big Read" Top 100 Novels. (authoritative list)
This is book 62 of 101 in Penguin English Library. (publisher series)
This is book 853 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. George Eliot (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: William Blackwood and Sons
Country: England
Publication Date: 1871
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 1088

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

An excellent work of social commentary and a great illuminator of the human spirit. The book and its characters have great depth. No offensive language, violence or sexuality.

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Case for Books
  • Conducting the Reference Interview
  • The Bibliophile's Devotional

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