Middlemarch

George Eliot's greatest work is a magnificent portrait of a provincial town and its inhabitants. Encompassing society as a whole and the struggles of the individual, it is a Victorian masterpiece.

Middlemarch is an acclaimed picture of life as it was lived at the time of the 1832 Reform Bill and the coming of the railways. At the heart of the novel are questions of vocation and marriage, sacrifice and dedication, compromise and ambition. Its heroine is Dorothea, whose passionate nature and disillusionment in her marriage to the pedant Casaubon reach tragic proportions. Her position is mirrored by that of the young Doctor Lydgate, whose aims are frustrated not only by his own weaknesses and the egotism of his beautiful wife Rosamond, but also by the jealousies, intrigues and political squabbles of Middlemarch itself.

Their parallel experiences, along with those of Bulstrode the banker and Will Ladislaw, the cousin and antithesis of Casaubon, are central threads in the 'web of relationships' that is the substance and the great theme of Middlemarch.