George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, (1819–1880) was a British author whose novels are rich in psychological analysis, a defining feature of modern fiction. Starting out as a critic and translator, she was influenced by the ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach and Auguste Comte. Her remarkable body of fiction was shaped by her vast intellectual interests and her unparalleled grasp of the novelistic form. She explored a wide variety of themes in her novels, gifting her readers with an acutely observed portrayal of English rural and provincial life. This trailblazing Victorian writer’s major works include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876).
“You are a good young man,” she said. “But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.” British novelist George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) painted a rich and vivid portrait of a small 19th-century town in her acclaimed novel, Middlemarch. Published in eight parts in 1871–72 and also published in four volumes in 1872, Eliot’s magnum opus delves into the lives of people belonging to various classes in Middlemarch—the landed gentry, clergy, farmers, labourers, and professionals. The narrative revolves around two central characters—Dorothea Brooke, an intelligent woman who marries the wrong man, and Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious, progressive doctor who also makes a costly mistake when choosing a mate. Eliot refused to bow to the dictates of tradition and ended her novel on a happy note as women writers of the time were expected to do. Rich in insight and layered with moral ambiguity, Middlemarch boldly lays bare the reality of matrimony.This quintessentially modern novel was hailed by pioneering modernist author Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
