George Eliot

A re-invention of George Eliot's classic story of loss, tragedy and the relentless nature of fate. Outgrowing - but still hopelessly devoted to - her family, Maggie befriends the disfigured Phillip Wakem, son of a local lawyer. But their fathers become embroiled in a bitter legal dispute that only the prosperous Wakem can win, and the Tullivers find fate dealing them the first harsh hand of many. With their father dead, the family must face up to their cold future together. Helen Edmundson's stage adaptation of George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss was first performed by Shared Experience Theatre Company in 1994.

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test.

The Mill on the Floss is one of George Eliot's greatest works. The novel is a portrayal of oppressive narrowness. The story revolves around Maggie Tulliver who is an intellectual and high-spirited young girl and her incurious and pragmatic brother Tom who has an altogether different approach towards life than her sister. Torn between her passion for intellect and a desperate need to win her brother's love and approval, Maggie Tulliver is always in conflict with her family. One cannot fail to ignore the gender discrimination that existed in that century. This beautifully crafted classic continues to enchant its readers till date.George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist who was one of the leading writers of the Victorian Era. She wrote seven novels, including the Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Silas Marner. Most of her stories are set in provincial England and are popular for their realism and psychological insight. She used a male pen name so that her work could gain recognition. Those days, female authors were stereotyped as writers of light-hearted romances, a myth Eliot wanted to break and shattered successfully.

The text of The Mill on the Floss, that of the 1862 third edition for which Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated in order to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions. "Backgrounds" includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centering on the novel’s content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews and responses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, including those by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin. Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in this century, "Criticism" includes ten of the best studies of the novel, providing the reader with historical and critical perspective. The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, John Kucich, Margaret Homans, and Deirdre David. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury. Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century. Henry James described Middlemarch as a ‘treasurehouse of detail’ while Virginia Woolf famously endorsed George Eliot’s masterpiece as ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.

Evokes nineteenth-century rural England through the story of Maggie Tulliver, who attempts to adapt to her life until her brother forbids her to see the one person who understands her after she is found in a compromising situation.

George Eliot (1819-80) is one of the most widely-read of the 19th-century novelists and story-writers. "Impressions of Theophrastus Such" appeared in 1879, Eliot's last completed work. It consists of 18 short essays narrated by a middle-aged bachelor, Theophrastus.

Silas Marner has lived in Raveloe for years, but he remains alone, a weaver mistrusted by the village people. Then Eppie arrives and changes his life forever. Includes an introduction, notes and activities to enhance students' understanding and enjoyment of the novel. Age 14+

Romola, George Eliot's only historical novel, always occupied a special place in her own affections. Looking back at the end of her career, she remarked `I could swear by every sentence as having been written with my best blook'. Henry James called it `on the whole the finest thing she wrote'. Yet since its first appearance the novel has perplexed many of George Eliot's admirers by the range and density of its historical references. The Clarendon Edition, based on the original Cornhill serialization with emendations from later authoritative editions, traces and explains the allusions and provides a comprehensive account of the composition and publishing history of the novel: it confirms Romola as one of George Eliot's greatest artistic achievements.

George Eliot's tender pastoral is at once a realistic story of rural life and a symbolic drama of sin and repentance, Written in her simplest style, it paints a vivid picture of a rural life long since vanished.

From the author of MIDDLEMARCH and SILAS MARNER, a story of frustrated intelligence and longing, featuring the intelligent Maggie, who yearns to be loved, and her brother Tom, who is forced to study. When Maggie is cast out by Tom, she is ostracized by society, and must face the consequences of renunciation.

Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty Sorrel, but unknown to him, he has a rival, in the local squire’s son Arthur Donnithorne. Hetty is soon attracted by Arthur’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.

Middlemarch- A Study of Provincial Life, published 1871-2, is set in the imaginary county of Loamshire during the years of unrest preceding the 1832 Reform Bill. With its complex plot, broad canvas and huge cast of characters, it has long been recognized as one of the few truly classic English novels.

In this rich and humorous portrayal of eighteenth-century rural life, Geoffrey Beevers remains true to George Eliot's original novel. Adam Bede, a young carpenter of integrity, loves Hetty Sorrel, a pretty and self-centred dairymaid, who herself dreams of Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire. Arthur cannot resist seducing her, and their passion has tragic consequences for the whole community.3 women, 3 men

The works collected in this volume provide an illuminating introduction to George Eliot's incisive views on religion, art and science, and the nature and purpose of fiction. Essays such as 'Evangelical Teaching' show her rejecting her earlier religious beliefs, while 'Woman in France' questions conventional ideas about female virtues and marriage, and 'Notes on Form in Art' sets out theories of idealism and realism that she developed further in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. It also includes selections from Eliot's translations of works by Strauss and Feuerbach that challenged many ideas about Christianity; excerpts from her poems; and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe and Browning. Wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the intellectual development of this most challenging and rewarding of writers.

Often considered George Eliot's finest novel, Middlemarch is a masterpiece of literary realism. This is the first edition of the novel to be published with full critical apparatus since it appeared in 1871-2. It records all the variants in the main edition as well as many of the deletions in the manuscript. The introduction traces the history of composition, publication, and revision.

After suffering betrayal and rejection, Silas Marner leaves his community to settle in a strange place. There the lonely weaver becomes obsessed with accumulating money, until one day a little golden-haired orphan girl wanders into his home... Set at the beginning of the industrial revolution, Silas Marner weaves a telling social commentary into an inspiring tale of love and redemption.