'the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts'

The greatest 'state of the nation' novel in English, Middlemarch addresses ordinary life at a moment of great social change, in the years leading to the Reform Act of 1832. Through her portrait of a Midlands town, George Eliot addresses gender relations and class, self-knowledge and self-delusion, community and individualism.

Eliot follows the fortunes of the town's central characters as they find, lose, and rediscover ideals and vocations in the world. Through its psychologically rich portraits, the novel contains some of the great characters of literature, including the idealistic but naïve Dorothea Brooke, beautiful and egotistical Rosamund Vincy, the dry scholar Edward Casaubon, the wise and grounded Mary Garth, and the brilliant but proud Dr Lydgate. In its whole view of a society, the novel offers enduring insight into the pains and pleasures of life with others, and explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, and, above all, human relationships.

This edition uses the definitive Clarendon text.

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Features

• The greatest 'state of the nation' novel in English, Middlemarch is about living with (rather than defended from) others, about growing up, losing one's ideals - and finding them again.
• A new introduction which accounts for the famous wisdom of the novel, explaining how and why it so profoundly addresses the question of how to live.
• Contains a fully up-to-date bibliography of further reading.
• The definitive Clarendon text.

ABOUT THE SERIES

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range 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, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Contents
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of George Eliot
MIDDLEMARCH
Explanatory Notes

George Eliot

Edited by David Carroll, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, and David Russell, Associate Professor of English and Tutorial Fellow, University of Oxford.

David Carroll is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, edited the Clarendon edition of Middlemarch (1986). As well as publishing many articles on George Eliot's fiction, he has written Chinua Achebe (1980) and other essays on African literature. He is joint General Editor of the Longman Literature in English Series.

David Russell is Associate Professor of English and Tutorial Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Tact: Aesthetic Liberalism and the Essay Form in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2017).

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