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This panoramic work--considered the finest novel in English by many critics--offers a complex look at English provincial life at a crucial historical moment, and, at the same time, dramatizes and explores some of the most potent myths of Victorian literature. The text of this edition comes from the Clarendon Middlemarch, the first critical edition of the novel.

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WHO that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa,' has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand - in - hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide - eyed and helpless - looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child - pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many - volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her. Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self - despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order. That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far - resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill - matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later - born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardour alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse. Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love - stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart -beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long recognisable deed. Excerpted from Middlemarch by George Eliot All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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CHOICE Review

The Clarendon Edition of George Eliot's greatest novel now joins the growing shelf of these superbly edited texts, produced until recently by the late Gordon Haight. David Carroll (University of Lancaster), compiler of George Eliot: The Critical Heritage (1971) and author of other respected Eliot studies, has edited this volume with the meticulous scholarship and critical wisdom characteristic of its predecessors. Carroll has chosen the 1874 text, generally accepted to be the last version carefully revised by Eliot herself, although, of course, Carroll has made such necessary corrections missed in 1874 as well as provided us with a list of variants on each page and such explanatory notes as seem absolutely essential, plus four illustrations including two facsimiles of manuscript pages. This volume is a scholar's treasure, not only for its illumination of the text, but for its 66-page introduction. Carroll first tells us how Middlemarch was created out of two originally distinct stories, then how the decision to publish in seven parts influenced the structure and texture of the novel; then he gives us a suspenseful account of the transformation of Eliot's notes into the final text; and, finally, an informed report of its early publication history including all the financial arrangements. Obviously, this is a text for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, their teachers, and for select members of the reading public.-J.W. Bicknell, emeritus, Drew University