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Audiobook edition · 2 h 0 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if hearing every thought around you leaves you lonelier than ever?
Latimer claims to know the hour of his death. Before it comes, he sets down his life in a dark confession. Frail, sensitive and lonely, he grows up under a stern father's judgment. After a serious illness, visions begin—and the thoughts of other people become impossible to escape.
Then he meets Bertha Grant, the cool, clever young woman expected to marry his brother Alfred. Hers is the one mind he cannot read. Mystery draws him toward her with fascination and dread. In The Lifted Veil, George Eliot turns supernatural terror toward a painful question: does knowing others bring understanding, or destroy the hope of sympathy?
What you’ll discover
- A gift that punishes Enter a mind besieged by other people's vanity, boredom, spite and small lies.
- The unreadable Bertha Grant Meet the woman whose hidden thoughts make her both alluring and frightening to Latimer.
- A confession under scrutiny Listen as Latimer judges the world and reveals his own pride and bitterness.
- A household divided See a dreamy younger son struggle beside a strong brother their practical father favours.
- Knowledge without comfort Explore the unsettling distance between hearing another person's thoughts and feeling sympathy for them.
Who will love it
For readers who love short, dark stories with a psychological edge, Gothic confessions, and supernatural gifts that become curses.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A man announces the hour of his death
- A frail boy among stronger people
- A vision of Prague comes true
- The curse of hearing every mind
- Bertha Grant, the one mind he cannot read
- What the tale means and how it is told
Who’s who
- LatimerThe narrator, a sensitive, proud and lonely man who tells his life story and claims to know the hour of his death.
- Bertha GrantA cool, clever young woman whose thoughts Latimer cannot hear, which draws him to her with fascination and dread.
- AlfredLatimer's older brother, strong and cheerful, favoured by their father and expected to marry Bertha.
- Latimer's fatherA stern banker who prizes practical success and tries to shape his dreamy younger son toward science.
- Charles MeunierLatimer's friend from school in Geneva, a lover of science and medicine who will matter later in the story.
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- Audiobook
- 2 h 0 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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The Lifted Veil
by George Eliot · 1859
Latimer can hear other minds, but Bertha Grant's silence draws him toward a fate he half sees.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A man announces the hour of his death
The story opens with Latimer's own statement that the time of his end is near. He says he knows the month and almost the minute, and he claims he does not fear the thought. He writes, he says, because he wants one person to see him as he truly was, since no one else ever has.
This opening sets the tone for everything that follows. Latimer is not a hero, and he does not ask us to like him. He is an educated, sensitive and proud man, and he tells his story with a mix of self-pity and sharp honesty. From the first page the reader must decide how far to trust him.
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What is The Lifted Veil about?
It is a short confession by Latimer, a sensitive man who foresees his own death. He gains visions of the future and the power to hear others' thoughts, and his love for Bertha Grant tests what such sight is worth.
What does the title The Lifted Veil mean?
The veil stands for what normally hides the future and other people's thoughts from us. Latimer's gift lifts it, and the story asks whether seeing everything is a blessing or a burden.
When was The Lifted Veil written?
George Eliot published it in 1859, in Blackwood's Magazine, in the same period as her early novels. It is not a true story but a work of fiction with Gothic and supernatural elements.
The author
George Eliot
1819–1880 · English novelist
George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist, essayist, poet and journalist. She was born in Warwickshire in 1819 and later lived in London, where she died in 1880. Her novels include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871–1872).
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