Middlemarch is a novel written by George Eliot. Released in eight volumes from 1871 to 1872, it tells of the lives of the people of the titular town. Middlemarch can be described as an early example of an encyclopediac novel, as it intricately examines the lives and interpersonal politics of the people of Middlemarch.
Characters[]
- Dorothea Brooke - a young idealist
- Dr. Tertius Lydgate - a charming and tactless doctor
- Casaubon - a pedantic scholar
- Rosamond - a spendthrift beauty
- Bulstrode - a religious hypocrite with a dark past
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty, and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town is set during the time of social unrest prior to the first Reform Bill of 1832. It is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr. Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.
Henry James described Middlemarch as a 'treasure-house of detail' while Virginia Woolf famously endorsed George Eliot's masterpiece as 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Felix Holt, the Radical | George Eliot | 1866 | A novel by the same author set in the same time period |
| Cranford | Elizabeth Gaskell | 1851-1853 | A novel with similar themes |
| Vanity Fair | William Makepiece Thackeray | 1847-1848 | A major novel of the Victorian era with similar themes |
| The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen | 2001 | A novel with similar themes |
| Bleak House | Charles Dickens | 1852-1853 | A major novel of the Victorian era |
| Mrs. Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | 1925 | A novel with similar themes |
| Ulysses | James Joyce | 1922 | A major novel of the Modernist era with vaguely similar themes |
| Les Misérables | Victor Hugo | 1862 | A major novel with similar themes published in around the same time period |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | 1865-1867 | A major novel with similar themes published in around the same time period |
| The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling | Henry Fielding | 1749 | A major novel of the Early Modern era |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 1813 | A novel with similar themes |
Sources[]
- Goodreads
- Wikipedia