Middlemarch (Penguin Classics) Book

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

Middlemarch : Paperback : Penguin Books Ltd : 9780141439549 : 0141439548 : 25 Mar 2003 : Features Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; and the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career.

'People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are' George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community.