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Title: Middlemarch (Everyman Paperback Classics) by George Eliot, Margaret Harris, Judith Johnston, Beryl Gray ISBN: 0-460-87561-2 Publisher: Everymans Library Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (70 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Literary Masterpiece! Try Reading It Again- It's Worth It!
Comment: George Eliot, (nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans), wrote a literary masterpiece with "Middlemarch." I was forced to read this in school at an age when term papers and grades meant more than absorbing the riches this novel contains. I recently gave it another shot, lured back into 19th century English lit. by easier reads, like Jane Austen, whose work I love, and the Brontes. But I don't want to compare apples and oranges. Let it suffice to say, I got back to "Middlemarch" 30 years later. And it was/is so worth the re-read!
Ms. Eliot created, with this book, an entire community in England in the mid-1800s and called it Middlemarch. She populated this provincial town with people of every station, local squires and their families, tradespeople, the rising middle class, (Middlemarch, right?), & the poor and destitute, ruthless and honest. She crowded them together, with all their ambitions, dreams and foibles, in this magnificent literary soap opera, and wove a wonderful web of plots and subplots. Ms. Eliot also wrote scathing social commentary and used great wit.
The fortunes of Middlemarch are rising in this new era when machines and trains - fast, available transportation - are changing the world, the economy, the politics. Rigid social codes, the British class system, is in danger of being breached. Folks are out to make a quick buck, or a shilling - anything to acquire wealth and enhance social position.
Dorothea Brooks lives in Middlemarch. She is an intelligent, sensitive young woman, who wants to dedicate her life to important endeavors. She does not want to settle for a typical marriage and family, but looks toward a more noble cause. As a woman, a professional life is not open to her, nor is the pursuit of intellect, outside of marriage. She weds the elderly Rev. Casaubon, a cold, narcissistic man, thinking that by assisting him with his scholarly research and writing, she will find happiness.
Dr. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch to begin his medical practice there. He is an idealist, who has dreams of finding a cure for cholera and opening a free clinic. He meets blonde and beautiful Rosamund Vincie, who fancies him for a spouse...along with a new house, new furniture, an extensive wardrobe, etc.
A dashing, romantic Will Ladislaw, nephew of Rev. Casaubon, enters the story, as does Rosie's brother Fred, who wants desperately to marry his Mary, but is out of work and in debt. This cast of richly drawn characters continues to grow with the introduction of Mary's family, the Garths, the banker Bulstrode, friends, relations, and an evil villain or two.
This complex novel and portrait of the times, is one of the best reading experiences I have had in a long while. And it didn't hurt at all! :))
Rating: 5
Summary: An English classic
Comment: A real pleasure to recently discover this classic for the first time, "Middlemarch" is a fine example of the English style of writing from that period, a long book of almost 900 pages, with a large cast of characters and several main plot lines, novels like this are a reminder of the richness of the English language. This is a soap opera set in the fictional town of Middlemarch with descriptions of every walk of life, George Eliot's perceptions of human nature make this a timeless piece of fiction, though there is no doubt that she describes a way of life gone forever.
A main theme in this novel would seem to be possessing Utopian visions and the difficulty of putting them into practice in reality. One of the main characters is Dorothea, a young woman with great social ideals, she "thinks too much for a woman" and is under constant pressure from well-meaning realtives who want her to marry safely and give up her goals of saving the world. Dr. Lydgate is someone else we come to know quite well, another individual who has lofty ideas but trouble coping with the real world because he tries to ignore it. Mr. Brooke and Bulstrode also have certain visions of themselves not shared by an informed public.
Some reviewers seem to feel this book is too long, that the story could have been told in half the words, but I would not change one bit of this, the beautiful use of words helps me to escape into the world of Middlemarch when life was slower moving and people had more time for reflection.
Rating: 2
Summary: Warm, fuzzy, too long. Think Tolstoy after a lobotomy.
Comment: Middlemarch is treated as a classic: it shouldn't be. While it has some amusing stock characters and portrays some of the great disappointments of life, its moralizing is overt and its plot is boring.
The characterization is thorough and and frequently good. But the villians are all too villainous and the good guys all too good. One can see the ending a mile off, and one begins to shift in one's seat after only 200 pages.
However, one hopes that the end would have some twist that would dispell the reader's suspicions of a transparent march to an inexorable ending. Eliot disappoints with her anticlimactic and smarmy ending.
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Title: The Mill on the Floss (Oxford World's Classics) by George Eliot, Gordon S. Haight, Dinah Birch ISBN: 0192833642 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Daniel Deronda (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot, Terence Cave ISBN: 0140434275 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Adam Bede by George Eliot, Stephen Gill ISBN: 0140431217 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1980 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Bleak House (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Nicola Bradbury ISBN: 0141439726 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Vanity Fair : A Novel without a Hero by Joanna Trollope, Leonard J. Kent, Nina Berberova, William Makepeace Thackeray ISBN: 0375757260 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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