George Eliot

Francine Prose

A deluxe Harper Perennial Legacy Edition, with an introduction from Francine Prose, award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of Reading Like a Writer George Eliot’s beloved classic novel—hailed by Virginia Woolf as “masterful”—follows the life, loves, foibles, and politics of the residents of a fictional English town set amid the social unrest during the Industrial Revolution. A sprawling work set in a provincial English town, Middlemarch boasts a large cast of characters whose stories interweave against a backdrop of political upheaval. Instead of choosing to wed a wealthy landowner and settle for a comfortable life, Dorothea Brooke decides to marry Edward Casaubon—a dull scholar who is her senior by a few decades. Dorothea hopes the union will afford her with the opportunity to share in her husband’s intellectual pursuits, but even her best efforts can’t save the disastrous marriage. Meanwhile, idealistic doctor Tertius Lydgate has progressive ideas about the medical field, and he believes the village of Middlemarch is the place that will embrace his beliefs. But when he weds Rosamond Vincy, the mayor’s beautiful daughter, his ideals come into stark contrast with his new bride’s materialism and vanity, dooming their marriage from the start. Lastly, Rosamond's brother, Fred, is reluctantly destined for the Church. But his childhood sweetheart Mary Garth refuses to accept him until he settles into a more suitable career and one that interests him. But when circumstances lead to Fred losing a sizeable fortune that sets off a calamitous turn of events, he must reevaluate the choices he has made. As The Guardian notes, Middlemarch “looms above the mid-Victorian literary landscape like a cathedral of words,” offering readers a pivotal shaping of literary realism. Middlemarch is a masterwork of fiction that is as timely today as when it was first published.

Middlemarch

Beatrix

‘Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another’

 "… All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.”                                              “There is correct English: that is not slang.”                                                        “I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.”

Liv Gliese Johnsen

She was not in the least teaching Mr Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr Casaubon

 '(…) All choice of words is slang. It marks a class." 

‘There is correct English: that is not slang’

‘I beg you pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays (…)’

And before they had ridden a mile she was far on in the costume and introduction of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middlemarch, and foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband’s high-bred relatives

Zeke Taylor

It is true that [Casaubon] knew all the classical passages implying the contrary [namely, that a genuine affection for the romantic partner leads to some kind of delight or at least more enchantment than “normal life”]; but knowing classical passages, we find, is a mode of motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force for their personal application.

That's the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here.

(Need to clean up the wording/spelling after photo scanned text)

It swonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect tat we are blamed for them, Even our own persons in the glass are pt to change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark 0n their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing toW pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never Omplain or have nobody to complain for them. Dagley's hómestead DRVer heforo Joe it did today, with his

“When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes — one is conscious of her presence.”

Idea of utilitarian beliefs overruling actual concrete relationships

There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

Middlemarch quotes

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