English
St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
George Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of
Provincial Life
Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd.
Toronto, Ontario
2004, 739 pages
George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871–72) is one of the classic
novels of English literature and was admired by Virginia Woolf as
“one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” A
female Bildungsroman and a study of character and society in the
realistic mode pioneered by Balzac, Middlemarch is also a
historical novel that offers a panorama of English society in an
era of social reform and political agitation. This Broadview
edition includes a critical introduction and a rich selection of
contextual materials, including contemporary reviews of the novel;
other writings by George Eliot (essays, reviews and criticism); and
historical documents pertaining to medical reform, religious
freedom and the advent of the railroads.
“Broadview Press and editor Gregory Maertz have produced a text
whose rich but judicious contextual annotation, notably
highlighting Eliot’s deep immersion in German culture, makes this a
crucial edition of what is arguably the greatest Victorian novel of
them all.”
—Michael McKeon, Rutgers University