14 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
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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
Readers who love dark psychological tales, troubled narrators and supernatural stories rooted in human questions will enjoy this novella, along with lovers of Victorian fiction.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Certainty drains the world of colour
- A lonely childhood shapes Latimer
- His gift makes closeness more painful
- Bertha gains power by remaining hidden
- Loss opens the way to marriage
- Foresight cannot overcome the pull of desire
- Closeness needs room for the unknown
- The confession makes certainty feel like confinement
- Knowledge is not enough for connection
Who’s who
- LatimerThe narrator, a sensitive younger son who gains the power to foresee scenes and read minds, and who longs above all for understanding and love.
- Bertha GrantA sharp, cool, beautiful heiress with pale gray eyes, whose mind is closed to Latimer and who wants admiration and power.
- AlfredLatimer's confident elder brother, heir to the family, who expects to marry Bertha and treats Latimer with kind condescension.
- Latimer's fatherA rigid, orderly banker and landowner who wants a worldly successor and does not understand his dreamy younger son.
- Charles MeunierLatimer's friend from Geneva, a gifted medical scientist who later returns famous and eager to try a bold experiment.
- Mrs. ArcherBertha's new maid, a bold, handsome and hard woman who becomes the mistress's strange favourite.
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The Lifted Veil
by George Eliot · 1859
A sick man in 1850 knows the exact hour of his death, and the gift that shows it also shows him a marriage to dread.
ChallengingUnder 2 hours to read20 languages
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“There is no shortcut, no patented road to wisdom.”
In short
What would you do if you knew the exact minute of your death, down to the blue flame in the fire and the bell that no one answers? Latimer, the narrator of The Lifted Veil, knows it.
The Lifted Veil at a glance
- Reading time
- About 1 h 10 min55 min fast, 1 h 20 min slow
- Length
- 16,500 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1859by George Eliot
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A dying man announces the hour of his death
The story opens with its own ending, at least for the narrator. Latimer says that angina is closing in and that his doctor expects only a few more months. Then he goes further. He knows the date, September 20, 1850, the hour, ten at night, and every small event in his study.
He describes it like a man reading from a page. A tongue of blue flame rises from the fire. His lamp burns low. The tightness begins in his chest, and he pulls the bell, but no one comes. Then the lamp goes out with a foul smell, and the dark closes in.
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Details
- First published
- 1859
- Language
- English
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Eliot, George. The Lifted Veil. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lifted-veil.
Eliot, G. (2026). The lifted veil. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lifted-veil (Original work published 1859)
Eliot, George. The Lifted Veil. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lifted-veil.
@book{eliot2026lifted,
author = {Eliot, George},
title = {The Lifted Veil},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lifted-veil},
note = {First published 1859}
}
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What is The Lifted Veil about?
It is the confession of Latimer, a sensitive man who gains visions of the future and the power to hear other minds, and who marries the one woman he cannot read, with painful results.
Who is Bertha Grant in The Lifted Veil?
Filmore. Latimer cannot read her mind, which makes her seem a thrilling mystery to him.
What does the veil mean in The Lifted Veil?
The veil stands for what hides one person's inner thoughts from another. Latimer's gift draws it back, and the story asks what happens to love, hope and sympathy when nothing stays hidden.
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).
“There is no shortcut, no patented road to wisdom.”
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