Middlemarch

Credits and rights

Original writer

George Eliot

Publisher of this edition

BoingyBooks Classics

Original publisher

Project Gutenberg

Adaptation credits

John Shoufler / BoingyBooks Classics — digital edition

Original source / edition

Middlemarch (1872)

License

Public Domain

License link

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

Rights and adaptation notice

This work is in the public domain. John Shoufler published this digital edition through BoingyBooks Classics. The original work remains public domain and may be copied, adapted, and shared.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot (1872)

The novel Virginia Woolf called "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Dorothea Brooke, Dr. Lydgate, and a vast cast navigate marriage, ambition, politics, and moral choice in a fictional English Midlands town during the Reform era of 1829-1832.

Historical Significance:
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) published Middlemarch in eight installments from 1871 to 1872. She used a male pen name because she wanted her work judged on its merits, not dismissed as "mere feminine fiction." The novel weaves together multiple storylines — idealistic Dorothea's disastrous marriage to the pedantic Casaubon, ambitious Dr. Lydgate's entanglement with the beautiful but materialistic Rosamond — into a panoramic portrait of English society in transition. It is consistently voted the greatest novel in the English language in surveys of writers and critics. Martin Amis and Julian Barnes both called it "the greatest novel."

This public domain classic was originally published in 1872. Free to read and share.