Middlemarch

January 16, my birthday, I started Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871), a book I have wanted to read for fifty years. I finished it today, July 3.Set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch during 1829–32, and widely considered the greatest of Victorian novels, this mighty workhas often been compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace due to it's immense cast, and it's historical precision. Additionally, however, it reminds me of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1880) due to it's depth of psychological analysis of human nature in all its rhythms and shades. Some have called Middlemarch a novel without a hero, but in the end it is the town of Middlemarch itself, with all its dizzying array of foibles and follies, loves and slanders, gossip and redemption, tragedy and laughter, wealth and poverty, that fills the role. The author never ridicules, never mocks, but simply loves her people, every one, and after spending six months with them I will miss every one, even the monsters, but especially the disappointed.Halfway through I discovered that Edward VII (1841-1910), Queen Victoria's eldest son, read Middlemarch annually from it's publication until his death, thirty-six years later. I can see why. Spanning eight books, and nearly a thousand ages, the author never falters.A sample:“Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness."Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval. Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic--the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world."And, finally, the last and most famous line in the book, “...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in un-visited tombs.”

I read The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot when I was about 17 years old. I remember the experience because I almost literally could not put the book down. I read for 14 hours straight until I finished the book. I even remember cooking pork chops with one hand while holding the book in the other hand so that I could read while I cooked. I cannot tell you now what the book was about (that was almost 40 years ago), just that I loved it and devoured it, along with the pork chops:-). After reading Middlemarch, I plan to reread The Mill on the Floss and read all her other novels as well.I loved Middlemarch, but I didn’t devour it. I chewed it slowly - the writing too beautiful to swallow whole. It grabbed me right from the start and I knew I was in for a sublime reading experience.In many of the reviews I have read people have mentioned that Eliot’s narrative voice was not to their liking, finding it too didactic or distracting. I found her narrative to be one of the things I liked best. It was through this technique that most of the wisdom and life lessons were imparted. The narrative became another character for me, seamlessly blended with the rest of the characters.“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others."Her ability to sum up a character in one beautifully written paragraph is remarkable.In describing Mr. Casaubon, one of the main characters, Eliot writes. “It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self-- never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.”In talking about another character, Dr. Lydgate, she says. “Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life-- the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it-- can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul- wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.”Her dry wit and humor are scattered throughout the book like sparkling gems.“Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on”."He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James. "No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader."Oh, tallish, dark, clever--talks well--rather a prig, I think." "I never can make out what you mean by a prig," said Rosamond. "A fellow who wants to show that he has opinions." "Why, my dear, doctors must have opinions," said Mrs. Vincy. "What are they there for else?" "Yes, mother, the opinions they are paid for. But a prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions."“But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.”Eliot is sympathetic to her characters, showing the good and bad in all, even the characters who would be despised if written by most authors. There is no black and white here, and yet the story is still compelling without the devise of writing purely lovable or despicable characters. We are shown what motivates the most hateful figures as well as those we are drawn to, and as a result there is no one in this book with whom you cannot empathize in some way. Her writing is infused with penetrating insights into human nature without ever losing compassion and understanding for their frailties. This empathy for her characters, perhaps more than anything else, differentiates her writing from Dickens and Austen.I now look forward to reading all her other novels, starting with her first one, Adam Bede. It should be interesting to see her progression from first novel to last. I had very few preconceived notions about Middlemarch before I read it and maybe that helped me to enjoy it all the more, but enjoy it I certainly did!

It's as if a bad typist copied text and got it badly wrong. Way too many errors. I am comparing it to the Signet Classic edition, and this e-book contains textual, grammatical, and typographical errors ON EVERY PAGE! The only reason I purchased it was to be able to increase text size to facilitate reading. I will be requesting a refund.Amazon, you must remove this forthwith.

Middlemarch is for me a much loved novel to which I return time and time again.This version was at times incoherent and inappropriate terms such as guys and I think mom were used. I gave up unable to read or enjoy. Why these weird changes?

I am sure that George Eliot did not use the expressions 'c programming language' and 'e book' when writing in the 1850s. But they occur often in my Kindle edition of Middlemarch. No logical explanation. Also the word 'work' is usually replaced by 'paintings' and the word 'country' by u.s.a. Again no logical reason. A lady was also wearing a dress that was described as 'homosexual': presumably Eliot wrote gay. Who changed the words and why. Is this something that is happening a lot or am I the first to be so hacked.It is a bit more logical when 'about' is mostly replaced by 'approximately'. They can meant the same but do not always: eg ' we talk approximately Fred' . Or 'dress' always by 'get dressed' : eg 'she wore a blue get dressed.' Or 'see' by 'peer' or 'my dear' by my pricey'. Eliot may have written these. I cannot check as I am abroad at the moment.It's like reading a book in French with lots of faux amis. But this Kindle edition has I would guess about 2 or 3 such changes every page. Other examples are in the quotations at the top of each Chapter: Eliot uses them to illustrate what is happening. But the quotations from both Blake's Songs of Innocence and from Shakespeare's Sonnet 93 are changed by including close synonyms but the metre is sometimes lost.Do you know all about this which is why the Kindle edition is so cheap.

How can a book written a century-and-a-half ago still exert such a powerful addiction over modern readers who imagine themselves to be free from the conventions concerning class, race, gender and honour which so shackled C19 society? A remarkably perceptive and articulate woman who wrote as “George Eliot” to ensure she was not merely published but taken seriously at the time, Mary Ann Evans was able to enter into the minds of her characters and analyse their complex and shifting emotions so effectively that readers in any generation are able to relate to them. Admittedly some of the minor players are caricatures, such as the complacent, censorious inhabitants of Middlemarch, but the main protagonists are portrayed in such depth, both strengths and failings, that we even find ourselves feeling a twinge of sympathy for the canting hypocrite, non-conformist banker Bulstrode when he receives his final reckoning.Culled from two separate earlier stories, the main storylines are interwoven, contrasting the fortunes of two idealistic individuals: the wealthy well-born Dorothea, filled with the earnest but unfocused desire to make a difference in the world, and the ambitious young pioneering doctor Tertius Lydgate, determined to make his mark in furthering medical knowledge. Restricted by the naivety stemming from a sheltered upbringing and a lack of education to match her intelligence, Dorothea makes the mistake of marrying a selfish pedant, whose dry-as-dust research project has run into the ground. Her gradual realisation of the hollowness of his talent and the meanness of his outlook is made all the more poignant by the appearance on the scene of Casaubon’s intelligent and attractive young relative Will Ladislaw, who could not present a greater contrast in his open-minded spontaneity. An unwise marriage is also Lydgate’s downfall, since the lovely but shallow and materialistic Rosamund is neither willing or able to support him in achieving his aims.With its web of many well-developed, diverse characters and entertaining sub-plots, this is a kind of glorious literary soap opera, by turns humorous and poignant, set against a background of industrial and political revolution: the drives to extend the vote under the controversial Reform Act, and to develop the railways, seen as a mystifying and needless threat to civilised life by many in Middlemarch. Just occasionally, George Eliot falls prey to the prejudices of her time: anti-Semitic asides and snobbish descriptions of some low-born characters such as the “frog-faced” Joshua Rigg, bastard son of the perverse Featherstone, whose highest ambition is to use his unexpected inheritance to set himself up in the despised profession of moneychanger. Yet overall one is impressed by the sheer force of the author’s intellect, and struck by the irony that a female writer of this calibre was obliged to write under a male pseudonym.I am not sure whether George Eliot felt required to indulge in the flowery disquisitions so popular in Victorian writing, or revelled in displaying her skill in this, but I have to admit to struggling with some of these passages, not least where words have changed in their meaning, or turns of phrase become too convoluted for our preferred sparer style. Yet most descriptions and dialogues sizzle with a sharp wit which would not seem out of place in a modern novel.Less bleak than “The Mill on the Floss” or “Silas Marner”, “Middlemarch” deserves to be called one of the greatest English novels of the nineteenth century.

This is by far one of my favourite books. Although it is a long Victorian novel, I must have read it two or three times. Originally I read it at University and fell in love with the main hero, Will Ladislaw. Now as I have got older I appreciate the book on a much deeper level. Dorothea Brooke is the main character, a bit of a stoic intellectual. Her story and subsequent first marriage to a rather dull pedant, Edward Casaubon, interlinks with all the stories of the other characters and their worlds in a most intricate and amazing way. Of course, Dorothea mellows and accepts the proposal of Will even though this means she will be cut off from her previous husband, Casaubon's inheritance because of his envious and mean spirit. But we also see how Dorothea matures to help others misfortunes and circumstances particularly the fortunes of the local doctor, Lydgate. This book never ceases to move and enchant me. I could read it again and again.

4.5 StarsThe only reason this is not a full 5 stars is because it’s not my favourite English Classic.That being said, this book was amazing. Also long, extremely long and I had to make myself read it but once I got into it... there was no going back.I’ve been in a reading funk of sorts for the past couple of months and I’ve found pretty much everything I read unsatisfying, until this (and that’s saying something, since I started about 50 books give or take which I’ve since abandoned) I gave myself time and space to really savour this a few pages a day and it only made the experience of reading it even more pleasant.There’s a lot of thoughts and ideas in there. A lot of reflection and a lot of realism.What baffles and amazes me is that no matter the times we live in, the human condition never really changes. We are slaves to the same emotions, worries, problems, needs and wants.I don’t plan on expanding much in this review since, this is a classic and there’s plenty of reviews already for reference. I just wanted to make a note of my enjoyment of it in case I decide to pick it up again in the future.As far as English classics go, this is a winner.