Editions

Adam Bede

Adam Bede

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.

Reviews

  • A first-rate novel

    The Times

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

    Guardian

  • 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

    Independent

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About the Author

George Eliot

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

George Eliot

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Features

A long story: why record numbers of readers turned to doorstopper classics in lockdown

War and Peace, Middlemarch and Anna Karenina were among the lengthy novels that soared in lockdown. What's been drawing us back to the big beasts of literature?
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Features

George Eliot among 25 female authors published under their own name for the first time

The Reclaim Her Name project will publish 'debuts' from pen-named women authors who shaped literature.

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