Young, ardent Dorothea Brooke defies her sister by wedding the much older Reverend Edward Casaubon, blindly hoping to assist in his scholarly pursuits. Tertius Lydgate, a progressive doctor, new and unwelcome in provincial Middlemarch, is charmed into marriage with the selfish and shallow Rosamond Vincy, a disastrous mismatch of his own. Soon blatant stubbornness, unruly jealousy, blind idealism, and calculated blackmail threaten to upend the Midlands village and lay waste to happy endings.
Middlemarch, George Eliot's epic realist masterwork, encapsulates Victorian society on the edge of radical political, social, and industrial change. Originally published in eight volumes, it is regarded today as one of the greatest English novels of all time.
Revised edition: Previously published as Middlemarch, this edition of Middlemarch (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.