Middlemarch

The 150th Anniversary Edition introduced by Zadie Smith

Perhaps the greatest novel of them all... An enormous canvas and a vast and poignant range of character...a marvellous portrait of nineteenth-century provincial life

In Middlemarch George Eliot's serious intelligence produced a novel that no one else could have been capable of - a picture of society as an organic, living, breathing synthesis - order and disorder, hope and hopelessness, pride and humility, charity and greed

Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people

Another great romantic story, in which the adorable intellectually pretentious heroine makes a disastrous marriage to a desiccated fossil before finding true love with a penniless somebody

She had such power, and she knew she had. And such courage 

150th ANNIVERSARY GIFT EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZADIE SMITH 
 
Discover one of the most admired, best loved and influential novels in the history of English literature. 
 
'If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life...' 
 
Dorothea is bright, beautiful and rebellious. Lydgate is the ambitious new doctor in town. Both of them long to make a positive difference in the world. But their stories do not proceed as expected and both they, and the other inhabitants of Middlemarch, must struggle to reconcile themselves to their fates and find their places in the world. 
 
Middlemarch contains all of life: the rich and the poor, the conventional and the radical, literature and science, politics and romance, but above all it gives us a vision of what lies within the human heart. 
 
VINTAGE CLASSICS 150th ANNIVERSARY GIFT EDITION 
George Eliot's novel was first published in eight instalments, in an innovative new style of serialisation. The earliest part, entitled MIDDLEMARCH, Book 1 - Miss Brooke, was published on 1st December 1871. It was an instant commercial and critical success, and continues to captivate readers 150 years later. 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Wuthering Heights, Silas Marner, Ethan Frome & Orlando

More BBC Classics

Unabridged readings of four fictional masterpieces 
 
Contained in this collection are four more enduring classics, read in full by some of the very best audiobook narrators. With over 32 hours of irresistible storytelling, tracked by chapter for ease of navigation, this is the perfect way to immerse yourself in these iconic works. 
 
Wuthering Heights 
Emily Brontë's tempestuous tale of passions, betrayal and retribution on the wild Yorkshire moors. Read by Susan Jameson. 
 
Silas Marner 
George Eliot's heart-warming tour de force about a lonely weaver's search for redemption and hope. Read by Sean Baker. 
 
Ethan Frome 
Edith Wharton's powerful, affecting novella about a poverty-stricken young man attempting to escape a loveless marriage. Read by Joseph Ayre. 
 
Orlando 
Virginia Woolf's comic biography of a time-travelling hero whose adventures through the centuries include transforming into a heroine... Read by Clare Corbett. 
 
 
Credits: 
 
Wuthering Heights 
Read by Susan Jameson 
Produced by Ross Burman 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 24 August 2019 
 
Silas Marner 
Read by Sean Baker 
Produced by Martha Littlehailes 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 22 August 2019 
 
Ethan Frome 
Read by Joseph Ayre 
Produced by Julian Wilkinson 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 1 November 2019 
 
Orlando 
Read by Clare Corbett 
Produced by Simon Richardson 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 1 November 2019 
 
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltdribution Ltd © 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Unabridged readings of four fictional masterpieces 
 
Contained in this collection are four more enduring classics, read in full by some of the very best audiobook narrators. With over 32 hours of irresistible storytelling, tracked by chapter for ease of navigation, this is the perfect way to immerse yourself in these iconic works. 
 
Wuthering Heights 
Emily Brontë's tempestuous tale of passions, betrayal and retribution on the wild Yorkshire moors. Read by Susan Jameson. 
 
Silas Marner 
George Eliot's heart-warming tour de force about a lonely weaver's search for redemption and hope. Read by Sean Baker. 
 
Ethan Frome 
Edith Wharton's powerful, affecting novella about a poverty-stricken young man attempting to escape a loveless marriage. Read by Joseph Ayre. 
 
Orlando 
Virginia Woolf's comic biography of a time-travelling hero whose adventures through the centuries include transforming into a heroine... Read by Clare Corbett. 
 
 
Credits: 
 
Wuthering Heights 
Read by Susan Jameson 
Produced by Ross Burman 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 24 August 2019 
 
Silas Marner 
Read by Sean Baker 
Produced by Martha Littlehailes 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 22 August 2019 
 
Ethan Frome 
Read by Joseph Ayre 
Produced by Julian Wilkinson 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 1 November 2019 
 
Orlando 
Read by Clare Corbett 
Produced by Simon Richardson 
First broadcast on BBC Sounds, 1 November 2019 
 
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Five full-cast dramatisations including Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss & Silas Marner

The George Eliot BBC Radio Drama Collection

The collected BBC radio adaptations of George Eliot’s pioneering Victorian novels, known for their realism and psychological insight.

One of the greatest English authors of the 19th Century, George Eliot is renowned for her realistic storytelling and insight into the human psyche. This BBC Radio collection presents dramatisations of her five most famous novels, as well as an exploration of her life through her fictional characters. 
 
Adam Bede 
Summer, 1799, and in the Staffordshire village of Hayslope, one of Lisbeth Bede's sons has marriage on his mind... Eliot's haunting story of love betrayed and rewarded stars Thomas Arnold and Victoria Liddelle. 
 
The Mill on the Floss 
Free-spirited country girl Maggie Tulliver must look outside the love of her own family to find the fulfilment she craves. This classic tale of rejection and reconciliation stars Deborah Findlay, Jasmine Hyde, Tom Goodman-Hill and David Tennant. 
 
Silas Marner 
Reclusive, embittered miser Silas Marner finds salvation when he fosters a little foundling girl - but his life with Eppie is threatened when her biological father makes a claim on her... Starring George Costigan and Rebecca Callard. 
 
Middlemarch 
In 1830s England, passionate idealist Dorothea Brooke yearns to right society's wrongs. Starring Caroline Martin, Robert Glenister and Roger Allam. 
 
Daniel Deronda 
From the moment their eyes meet across a packed gaming room, Gwendolen Harleth and Daniel Deronda are irresistibly drawn to one another - and their fates become eternally and tragically entwined. Starring Anna Chancellor and Michael Perceval-Maxwell. 
 
In George Eliot: A Life in Five Characters, presenter Kathryn Hughes paints a portrait of the author through her key characters, as she talks to Eliot's biographer Philip Davis and authors Tessa Hadley, Sarah Moss, Sathnam Sangera, David Constantine and Kathy O'Shaughnessy. 
 
 
First published 1859 (Adam Bede), 1860 (The Mill on the Floss), 1861 (Silas Marner), 1871-72 (Middlemarch), 1876 (Daniel Deronda) 
 
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

One of the greatest English authors of the 19th Century, George Eliot is renowned for her realistic storytelling and insight into the human psyche. This BBC Radio collection presents dramatisations of her five most famous novels, as well as an exploration of her life through her fictional characters. 
 
Adam Bede 
Summer, 1799, and in the Staffordshire village of Hayslope, one of Lisbeth Bede's sons has marriage on his mind... Eliot's haunting story of love betrayed and rewarded stars Thomas Arnold and Victoria Liddelle. 
 
The Mill on the Floss 
Free-spirited country girl Maggie Tulliver must look outside the love of her own family to find the fulfilment she craves. This classic tale of rejection and reconciliation stars Deborah Findlay, Jasmine Hyde, Tom Goodman-Hill and David Tennant. 
 
Silas Marner 
Reclusive, embittered miser Silas Marner finds salvation when he fosters a little foundling girl - but his life with Eppie is threatened when her biological father makes a claim on her... Starring George Costigan and Rebecca Callard. 
 
Middlemarch 
In 1830s England, passionate idealist Dorothea Brooke yearns to right society's wrongs. Starring Caroline Martin, Robert Glenister and Roger Allam. 
 
Daniel Deronda 
From the moment their eyes meet across a packed gaming room, Gwendolen Harleth and Daniel Deronda are irresistibly drawn to one another - and their fates become eternally and tragically entwined. Starring Anna Chancellor and Michael Perceval-Maxwell. 
 
In George Eliot: A Life in Five Characters, presenter Kathryn Hughes paints a portrait of the author through her key characters, as she talks to Eliot's biographer Philip Davis and authors Tessa Hadley, Sarah Moss, Sathnam Sangera, David Constantine and Kathy O'Shaughnessy. 
 
 
First published 1859 (Adam Bede), 1860 (The Mill on the Floss), 1861 (Silas Marner), 1871-72 (Middlemarch), 1876 (Daniel Deronda) 
 
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot’s classic Victorian epic about a brother and sister pitted against one another in love and life – plus bonus programme Free Thinking: George Eliot's Mill on the Floss

George Eliot’s classic Victorian epic about a brother and sister pitted against one another in love and life, starring Anna Maxwell Martin 
 
Based on George Eliot’s own rural upbringing and relationship with her estranged brother, The Mill on the Floss is a powerful, dynamic tale of familial rejection, sibling rivalry and what happens when the head confronts the heart. 
 
Growing up at Dorlcote Mill in the beautiful English countryside, young Maggie yearns for approval and affection. With her dark, striking looks and quick intelligence she is the misfit of the Tulliver family, and while her father dotes on her, her mother despairs of her rebelliousness. But it is the love of her stolid, dutiful brother Tom that Maggie craves most, and despite their opposing natures, the two forge a close bond. 
 
But as adults, their paths diverge. Following their father’s bankruptcy, Tom leaves school and enters the world of business, determined to repay the family’s debts and regain their home.Maggie, meanwhile, is drawn to two very different men: kindred spirit Philip Wakem, the son of her father's enemy, and the charming, seductive Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin, Lucy. 
 
As she struggles to reconcile passion and loyalty, the choices Maggie makes will set her against her beloved brother – with tragic consequences... 
 
This stunning adaption is full of humour and high drama, and features a rich, filmic soundscape. 
 
Also included is bonus programme Free Thinking: George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss, hosted by Shahidha Bari, in which writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw and academics Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis and Peggy Reynolds discuss the background to Eliot’s much-loved 1860 novel and read selected extracts. 
 
Cast 
George Eliot, the Narrator ….. Anna Maxwell Martin 
 Young Maggie ….. Amy-Jayne Leigh 
 Young Tom ….. Oliver Zetterstrom 
 Young Lucy ….. Grace Doherty 
 Mr Tulliver ….. Roger Ringrose 
 Mrs Tulliver ….. Alison Belbin 
 Maggie ….. Joanna Vanderham 
 Tom ….. Will Kirk 
 Lucy ….. Ell Potter 
 Philip ….. Chris Lew Kum Hoi 
 Stephen ….. Jack Farthing 
 Mrs Moss ….. Heather Craney 
 Mr Wakem ….. John Dougall 
 Mrs Glegg ….. Elizabeth Counsell 
 Mr Stelling ….. John Lightbody 
 Dr Kenn ….. Hasan Dixon 
 Luke/Bob ….. Kurtis Lowe 
 Keiza/Sally ….. Bettrys Jones 
 
Written by George Eliot 
Adapted by Rhiannon Tise 
Produced and directed by Tracey Neale 
Studio Managers: Keith Graham, Mike Etherden, Jenni Burnett &amp; Alison Craig 
Production Co-Ordinator: Anne Isger 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 6-17 April 2020 
 
Free Thinking: George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss 
Presented by Shahidha Bari 
With Rebecca Mead, Fiona Shaw, Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis and Peggy Reynolds 
Produced by Fiona McLean

George Eliot's beloved story of life, love and politics in an English town, as heard on BBC Radio 4 – plus bonus documentary In Our Time: Middlemarch

George Eliot's beloved story of life, love and politics in an English town 
 
A jewel in the classic literature crown, Middlemarch was selected as one of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels That Shaped Our World’. Its epic arc takes in politics, tragedy, romance and comedy, interweaving multiple narratives to make up a thrilling ensemble tale. 
 
Set in the 1830s, this ‘study of provincial life’ introduces us to young, idealistic Dorothea Brooke, who accepts a proposal from scholarly Edward Casaubon, hoping to forge a loving partnership of intellectual equals. But on honeymoon in Rome, she swiftly becomes disillusioned. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, she finds solace in her friendship with Casaubon’s cousin, Will Ladislaw – only for her controlling husband to suspect her of betrayal, and set out to test her loyalty. 
 
Meanwhile, mayor’s son Fred Vincy embarks on a steep economic learning curve, risking his burgeoning relationship with Mary Garth. When he contracts typhoid, he is treated by the town’s new medical man, Tertius Lydgate, who becomes drawn to Fred’s sister, Rosamond. Eager to win her hand, the doctor seeks help from the wealthy Mr Bulstrode – a decision he will come to regret... 
 
As their stories shift, viewpoints twist together and lives collide and realign in a compelling ‘convergence of human lots’ that shows us an entire world in microcosm. Juliet Aubrey stars as the Narrator, George Eliot, with Olivia Vinall as Dorothea, Charles Edwards as Casaubon and John Heffernan as Dr Lydgate. 
 
Also featured is a bonus edition of In Our Time, in which Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot’s classic novel, described by Virginia Woolf as ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'. 
 
Cast and credits 
 The Narrator, George Eliot – Juliet Aubrey 
Dorothea – Olivia Vinall 
Edward Casaubon – Charles Edwards 
Dr Lydgate – John Heffernan 
Will Ladislaw – Joseph Quinn 
Arthur Brooke/Caleb Garth/Mr Trumball – Neil McCaul 
Sir James Chettam – Hugh Skinner 
Rev Farebrother – Miles Jupp 
Nicholas Bulstrode – Adrian Scarborough 
Celia – Lucy Reynolds 
Peter Featherstone/Standish/John Raffles – Clive Hayward 
Fred Vincy/Auction bidder – Will Kirk 
Rosamond – Laura Christy 
Mr Vincy/Mr Bambridge – Rick Warden 
Mrs Cadwallader/Mrs Plymdale – Jessica Turner 
Adolf Naumann/Barman – Adam Courting 
Dr Hawley/Clerk – Greg Jones 
Servant/Mrs Abel – Sinead MacInnes 
Tantripp/Mary Garth – Scarlett Courtney 
Mrs Garth – Alison Belbin 
Letty Garth – Grace Doherty 
Farmer/Mr Hopkins – Ikky Elyas 
Tertius Lydgate – John Heffernan 
Harriet Bulstrode – Rosie Cavaliero 
Mrs Vincy/Farebrother’s aunt – Heather Craney 
 
Written by George Eliot 
Adapted by Katie Hims 
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole and Tracey Neale 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 23 November-7 December 2019

Silas Marner

A heartwarming and poignant tale of a lonely man brought back to life and faith

A great novel of unquenchable optimism and boundless humanity

It is a book that lifts your heart, makes you feel spiritually enriched and persuades you of the potential goodness of human nature

Eliot's finest pastoral tale... notable for the sharpness of its rural detail, its tactful symbolism and its variation between high melodrama and broad comedy

George Eliot was born in Nuneaton on 22nd November 1819. Baptized Mary Anne Evans, Eliot chose to write using a male pen name. She was sent away to school but returned when her mother died in 1836.She later moved to Coventry with her father.After her father's death she became the Assistant Editor of the Westminster Review in 1851. She also met George Henry Lewes this year and they became partners for the rest of his life. Lewes was already married, although he and his wife both considered their relationship to be an open one, but he and Eliot set up home together, much to the dismay of polite London society. 
 
In 1857 Eliot published Amos Barton in Blackwood's Magazine and in 1859 her novel Adam Bede was published to great acclaim.Her first attempt to write Middlemarch, her most famous novel, ended in failure. Abandoning it, she began a short novella entitled Miss Brooke which was eventually integrated into the final version of Middlemarch. The novel was published serially in eight parts in 1871. Lewes died in 1878 and Eliot married again in 1880. Her husband, John Walter Cross was an American who was twenty years her junior. George Eliot died on 22nd December 1880 at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and is buried in Highgate Cemetery next to Lewes.

A heartwarming and poignant tale of a lonely man brought back to life and faith. 
 
 Silas Marner lives a friendless and isolated existence near the country village of Raveloe, hoarding his gold. One night his fortune is stolen and Silas loses everything he holds dear. But then the golden-haired child Eppie appears in his home, and Silas begins to reform bonds of faith and human connectedness that he once renounced forever. 
 
 'A great novel of unquenchable optimism and boundless humanity' Guardian

A powerful and dramatic tragedy about the struggle between head and heart

It was my first really grown-up book, but it is the book that wrings my heart and I feel I bump into elements of it all my life

A rich, gripping tragedy...narrative energy and emotional intelligence

If I had an imaginary friend, Maggie was it. I loved her, I laughed with her, I agonised about her problems, I cried over her . . . and I still do...George Eliot's understanding of human nature is profound...the greatest British novelist of any age

Maggie's dilemma is one that pervades much of Eliot's writing: the dilemma of head versus heart, the woman's struggle to be taken seriously as an intellect while coping with the demands of uninvited passion... Eliot dealt in human relationships and she was a mistress of the art

Mary Anne Evans was born near Nuneaton on 22 November 1819. She adopted the pseudonym George Eliot when she began her writing career. In her youth she was heavily influenced by her evangelical teachers but she later broke with orthodox religion. After she moved to Coventry with her father in 1841, she undertook the task of translating D.F. Strauss's controversial book Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1846) for Charles Bray. After her father's death she moved to London and helped to edit the radical journal the Westminster Review from 1851 to 1854. In 1851 she also met the journalist George Henry Lewes and, despite Lewes's marriage, they became partners for the rest of his life. In 1854 Lewes and Eliot openly set up home together, a scandalous arrangement by the social standards of the day. 
 
In 1857 Eliot published Scenes from Clerical Life in Blackwood's Magazine and in 1859 her novel Adam Bede was published to great acclaim and established her as a bestselling author. Her most famous novel, Middlemarch was published serially in 1871. Lewes died in 1878 and, in 1880, Eliot married John Walter Cross, an American who was twenty years her junior. George Eliot died on 22 December 1880 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery next to Lewes.

Discover George Eliot’s powerful tragedy about the struggle between head and heart. 
 
**As Heard on BBC Radio 4** 
 
 Maggie and Tom Tulliver are both wilful, passionate children, and their relationship has always been tempestuous. As they grow up together on the banks of the River Floss, Tom's self-righteous stubbornness and Maggie's emotional intensity increasingly brings them into conflict, particularly when Maggie's beauty sparks some ill-fated attachments. George Eliot's story of a brother and sister bound together by their errors and affections is told with tenderness, energy and a profound understanding of human nature. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARINA LEWYCKA 
 
 'George Eliot is the greatest British novelist of any age' Daily Mail

Adam Bede

A tale of rural tragedy and redemption, George Eliot's first novel

From Adam Bede to Daniel Deronda, she questioned her times. She plumbed ideas, politics, religion, race, and above all the vagaries of the heart

A disconcerting mixture of High Victorian and snappily contemporary. The sentences tend to be massive, slow-moving but deadly accurate: the characters' motivations are dissected, the moral puzzles presented with great clarity

The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you

Discover George Eliot’s first novel, a tale of rural tragedy and redemption. 
 
 It may seem like an old tale: the beautiful village girl, her faithful admirer, a country squire's seduction. But seen through the eyes of any of its players, the old tale becomes one of fresh heartbreak, innocent hopes, best intentions gone awry, and better selves lost and restored. George Eliot's first novel shows all her humane intelligence and intimate knowledge of the richness and complexity of ordinary life.

Daniel Deronda

George Eliot's final novel is an extraordinary, keen and yet tender examination of two very different lives.

Daniel Deronda...is written with an understanding of egoism that no one except Proust has ever matched, and a calm assurance of style that sends a shiver of terrified sympathy down my spine.

700 pages of intellectual thrills. Watch out for the amazing women: Lydia Glasher, the abandoned mistress baying for revenge, and Alcharisi, the singer who gives up her son to pursue her career

There is not a page of Daniel Deronda that is not marked with intelligence, and a few are as queer and perceptive as any I've read

Daniel Deronda must surely rank high among works of literature that (excluding the Bible and other religious texts) have had the greatest effect on the world

George Eliot's final novel is an extraordinary, keen and yet tender examination of two very different lives. 
 
A beautiful young woman stands poised over the gambling tables in an expensive hotel. She is aware of, and resents, the gaze of an unusual young man, a stranger, who seems to judge her, and find her wanting. The encounter will change her life. 
 
The strange young man is Daniel Deronda, brought up with his own origins shrouded in mystery, searching for a compelling outlet for his singular talents and remarkable capacity for empathy. Deronda's destiny will change the lives of many. 
 
 ‘There is not a page of Daniel Deronda that is not marked with intelligence, and a few are as queer and perceptive as any I've read’ Sunday Times

The Lifted Veil

'Why did she stand before me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous eyes fixed on me, and the glittering serpent, like a familiar demon, on her breast?' 
 
In this dark novella of Victorian horror, George Eliot explores clairvoyance, fate and the possibility of life after death. 
 
One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Considered one the masterpieces of realist fiction, George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices are played out in the complexly portrayed central characters of the novel-the idealistic Dorothea Brooke; the ambitious Dr. Lydgate; the spendthrift Fred Vincy; and the steadfast Mary Garth. The appearance of two outsiders further disrupts the town's equilibrium-Will Ladislaw, the spirited nephew of Dorothea's husband, the Rev. Edward Casaubon, and the sinister John Raffles, who threatens to expose the hidden past of one of the town's elite.

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-penguin-english-library/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_English_Library_Series_26_06">Choose 5 classics for £25 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

The Penguin English Library Edition of Silas Marner by George Eliot 
 
"God gave her to me because you turned your back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine: you've no right to her!" 
 
Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and that of the little girl he adopts, is entwined with Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire, who, like Silas, is trapped by his past. Silas Marner, George Eliot's favourite of her novels, combines humour, rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
The Penguin English Library Edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot 
 
'She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings - that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible day' 
 
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for adult people'. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

With an essay by Barbara Hardy. 
 
'What can I do? ... I must get up in the morning and do what every one else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem to see all that can be - and I am tired and sick of it. And the world is all confusion to me' 
 
George Eliot's last, most controversial novel opens as the spoiled Gwendolen Harleth, poised at a roulette table about to throw away a small fortune, captivates Daniel Deronda. As their lives become intertwined, they are also transformed by suffering, misfortune, revelations and Daniel's fascination with the Jewish singer Mirah. Daniel Deronda shocked Victorian readers with its portrayal of the Jewish experience in British society, and remains a moving and epic portrayal of human passions. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Silas Marner (Classic Serial)

Outcast from the church, community, and close friends for a crime he did not commit, Silas Marner's trust and faith falls away. A broken, disillusioned man, he builds a new faith, that will never let him down: gold. He weaves his cloths, counts his money, baptises himself with the coins of his new religion. When tragedy strikes again and all his money is stolen he's bereft and grief stricken. Then on New Year's Eve a vision of gold flickers before the flames. Spilling locks are tumbling coins. For a moment Silas is reunited with his lovely sovereigns. And then he sees a little child When Eppie crosses his threshold, Silas's life changes. Their life together, from her childhood to womanhood, is his salvation. But all is threatened when her biological father makes a claim on her. A BBC Radio dramatisation starring George Costigan as Silas Marner and Rebecca Callard as Eppie. Dramatised by Richard Cameron and directed by Pauline Harris.

The Penguin English Library Edition of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot 
 
If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? 
 
Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie's fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Stop What You’re Doing and Read…Of All Ordinary Human Life: Middlemarch & To The Lighthouse

MIDDLEMARCH &amp; TO THE LIGHTHOUSE: Two great novels which will quicken your sense of ordinary existence - family tensions, falling in or out of love, growing up or growing old.

MIDDLEMARCH -  Perhaps the greatest novel of them all... An enormous canvas and a vast and poignant range of character...a marvellous portrait of nineteenth-century provincial life

To The Lighthouse is one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time

Mary Anne Evans was born near Nuneaton on 22 November 1819. She adopted the pseudonym George Eliot when she began her writing career. After her father's death she moved to London and helped to edit the radical journal the Westminster Review from 1851 to 1854. In 1851 she also met the journalist George Henry Lewes and, despite Lewes's marriage, they became partners for the rest of his life. In 1854 Lewes and Eliot openly set up home together, a scandalous arrangement by the social standards of the day. In 1857 Eliot published Scenes from Clerical Life in Blackwood's Magazine and in 1859 her novel Adam Bede was published to great acclaim and established her as a bestselling author.Her first attempt to write her most famous novel, Middlemarch, ended in failure. Abandoning it, she began a short novella entitled Miss Brooke which eventually became part of the final version of Middlemarch, which was published serially in 1871. Lewes died in 1878 and, in 1880, Eliot married John Walter Cross, an American who was twenty years her junior. George Eliot died on 22 December 1880 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery next to Lewes. 
 
Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. After his death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). These first novels show the development of Virginia Woolf's distinctive and innovative narrative style. It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press with the publication of the co-authored Two Stories in 1917, hand-printed in the dining room of their house in Surrey. 
Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. This intense creative productivity was often matched by periods of mental illness, from which she had suffered since her mother's death in 1895. On 28 March 1941, a few months before the publication of her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide.

To mark the publication of Stop What You're Doing and Read This!, a collection of essays celebrating reading, Vintage Classics are releasing 12 limited edition themed ebook 'bundles', to tempt readers to discover and rediscover great books. 
 
MIDDLEMARCH 
Dorothea is bright, beautiful and rebellious and has married the wrong man. Lydgate is the ambitious new doctor in town and has married the wrong woman. Both of them long to make a positive difference in the world. But their stories do not proceed as expected and both they, and the other inhabitants of Middlemarch, must struggle to reconcile themselves to their fates and find their places in the world. 
Middlemarch contains all of life: the rich and the poor, the conventional and the radical, literature and science, politics and romance. Eliot's novel is a stunningly compelling insight into the human struggle to find contentment. 
 
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE 
The serene and maternal Mrs Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr Ramsay, together with their children and assorted guests, are holidaying on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles.

Penguin Classics

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One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 
 
'One of the few English novels written for grown-up people' Virginia Woolf 
 
George Eliot's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly evocation of connected lives, changing fortunes and human frailties in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. 
 
Edited with an Introduction and notes by ROSEMARY ASHTON

Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) (1819-80) was a philosopher, journalist and translator before she became a novelist, her first stories being published in 1856. She led an unconventional life, co-editing the liberal journal Westminster Review for three years and living with the married man and philosopher George Henry Lewes. Her novels are among the greatest of the nineteenth century

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 
 
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for adult people'.

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists

Describing the silliness and 'feminine fatuity' of many popular books by lady novelists, George Eliot perfectly skewers the formulaic yet bestselling works that dominated her time, with their loveably flawed heroines. She also examines the great women writers of France and their enrichment of the culture, and the varying qualities of literary translations. 
 
 
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival, in the local squire&rsquo;s son Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty is soon attracted by Arthur&rsquo;s seductive charm and they begin to meet in secret. The relationship is to have tragic consequences that reach far beyond the couple themselves, touching not just Adam Bede, but many others, not least, pious Methodist Preacher Dinah Morris. A tale of seduction, betrayal, love and deception, the plot of Adam Bede has the quality of an English folk song. Within the setting of Hayslope, a small, rural community, Eliot brilliantly creates a sense of earthy reality, making the landscape itself as vital a presence in the novel as that of her characters themselves.

George Eliot

Abridged Edition

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
The Mill on the Floss, a Level 4 Reader, is A2+ in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing more complex uses of present perfect simple, passives, phrasal verbs and simple relative clauses. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly. 
 
Maggie lives with her brother Tom in a mill by the river Floss. Maggie loves Tom and Tom loves Maggie, but they are very different. When Tom's father loses all his money, Maggie and Tom must try and help their parents to keep the mill.

Penguin Readers Level 4: The Mill on the Floss (ELT Graded Reader)

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