1819–1880

George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans, writing as George Eliot, brought philosophical seriousness to English realism. Middlemarch remains a map of how a town thinks.

Joined sympathy, science, and social web into the most intellectually complete Victorian novel.

Primary works

Novel · 1872

George Eliot

In a Midlands town, Dorothea’s ardor and Lydgate’s ambition meet the web of other people’s money and marriages. Vocation is tested by the everyday.

Provincial novel