35 h 59 minAudiobook16 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your deepest wish to do good has nowhere to go?
Dorothea Brooke has wealth, serious ideas and a hunger for purpose. Yet her world gives her few ways to use her gifts. In George Eliot's Middlemarch, she places her hopes in the scholar Edward Casaubon, while a whole Midlands town watches, judges and pursues ambitions of its own.
Tertius Lydgate arrives with bold plans to improve medicine. Fred Vincy counts on money he has not earned. Around them, marriage, debt, rank and reputation bind households together. Each choice reaches beyond the person who makes it. Eliot's wise, funny narrator explores the distance between a grand hope and the daily work of living.
What you’ll discover
- A hunger for purpose Follow Dorothea's longing to turn her gifts into something useful beyond herself.
- Ambition under pressure See Lydgate's passion for medical discovery meet the demands of money and marriage.
- Marriage beyond the dream Explore what happens when people expect a shared life to fulfil different hopes.
- A town woven together Move among landowners, doctors, bankers and clerks, where private choices shape other lives.
- Wisdom with warmth Enjoy a narrator whose humour and fairness invite you to look beyond first judgments.
Who will love it
For readers who love novels about people's inner lives, marriage, vocation and moral choice, and anyone drawn to a community where money, ambition and sympathy shape intertwined lives.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A young woman longs for a purpose
- Marriage is chosen on a dream
- A town of many small worlds
- A doctor arrives with a bold plan
- Dorothea meets the limits of her marriage
- Debt, hope and the cost of a promise
- Rosamond and Lydgate at home
- Reform, gossip and public life
- What the story is really about
- How Eliot tells her story
Who’s who
- Dorothea BrookeA rich, earnest young woman who longs to put her energy and faith to good use, and who trusts too quickly in a scholar's worth.
- Edward CasaubonA middle-aged clergyman and scholar, anxious about his unfinished life's work, who marries Dorothea and cannot bring himself to share it with her.
- Tertius LydgateA gifted young doctor with new medical ideas who comes to town hoping to make a discovery, and who is proud and blind to his own flaws.
- Rosamond VincyThe prettiest and most accomplished girl in Middlemarch, who expects a refined life and a rise in rank through marriage.
- Fred VincyRosamond's easygoing brother, charming and in debt, who counts on an inheritance and must learn to work for what he wants.
- Mary GarthA plain, quick-witted and honest young woman who loves Fred but will not marry a man who drifts without purpose.
- Will LadislawCasaubon's young cousin, lively, artistic and without direction, who becomes a friend to Dorothea and searches for a worthy path.
- Nicholas BulstrodeThe town's powerful banker, a stern and outwardly pious man who backs the new hospital and holds influence over many lives.
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- Large-print eBook
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- Audiobook
- 35 h 59 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 16 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- 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
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Middlemarch
by George Eliot · 1871
Dorothea Brooke seeks a worthy purpose in a town where marriage, money and ambition shape every choice.
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In short
Middlemarch is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It came out in eight instalments in 1871 and 1872, and it is set in a Midlands town in the years just before the first Reform Bill of 1832.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A young woman longs for a purpose
The novel opens with Dorothea Brooke, who lives with her younger sister Celia at Tipton Grange, the house of their uncle, Mr Brooke. Dorothea is beautiful in a plain, serious way, and she dresses simply because she cares more about ideas than about fashion. She is orphaned, well off and full of religious feeling. What she wants most is to do something useful with her life, but the world around her has no clear place for a woman with such wishes.
Celia is the opposite in temperament. She is sensible, light of heart and fond of jewels, and she sees her sister's enthusiasm with affectionate doubt. Their small quarrels over their mother's jewels show the difference at once. Dorothea wants to give up pleasures, while Celia sees no harm in them. Eliot lets both views stand, and she never mocks either sister.
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What is Middlemarch about?
It follows several households in a provincial English town around 1830. The main threads are Dorothea Brooke's wish to do good, Doctor Lydgate's scientific hopes, and the love and money troubles of the Vincy and Garth families.
Who is George Eliot?
George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who died in 1880. She used a man's name partly so that her fiction would be judged seriously, and she is among the leading English novelists of the Victorian period.
When was Middlemarch written and is it a true story?
It was published in eight parts in 1871 and 1872. The story is fiction, though Eliot set it in a carefully drawn real period, the years just before the 1832 Reform Bill, and the town is invented.
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).
More by George Eliot
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