Middlemarch

Considered on of the masterpieces of realist fiction, George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of modern changes. The proposed Reform Bill promises political change; the building of railroads alters both the physical and cultural landscape; new scientific approaches to medicine incite public division; and scandal lurks behind respectability. The quiet drama of ordinary lives and flawed choices plays out in the complexly portrayed central characters of the novel-the idealistic Dorothea Brooke, the ambitious Dr. Lydgate, the spendthrift Fred Vincy, and the steadfast Mary Garth. The appearance of two outsiders further disrupts the town's equilibrium- Will Ladislaw, the spirited nephew of Dorothea's husband, the Rev. Edward Casaubon, and the sinister John Raffles, who threatens to explose the hidden past of one of the town's elite. Middlemarch displays George Eliot's clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge.

Georeg Eliot, 778 pages, paperback