The issue was compounded because Eliot's most recent novel, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) – also set in the same pre-Reform Bill England – had not sold well. īy May 1871, the growing length of the novel had become a concern to Eliot, as it threatened to exceed the three-volume format that was then the norm in publishing. While composing, Eliot compiled a notebook of hundreds of literary quotations, from poets, historians, playwrights, philosophers, and critics in eight different languages. Although a precise date is unknown, the process of incorporating material from ' Middlemarch ' into the story she had been working on was ongoing by March 1871. By the end of the month she had written 100 pages of this story and entitled it 'Miss Brooke'.

In December she wrote of having begun another story, on a subject that she had considered 'ever since I began to write fiction'. (Eliot had been living with Lewes since 1854.) After Thornie's death on 19 October 1869, all work on the novel stopped it is uncertain whether Eliot intended at the time to revive it at a later date. In August she began writing, but progress ceased in the following month amidst a lack of confidence in it and distraction by the illness of George Henry Lewes's son Thornie, who was dying of tuberculosis. The former piece is first mentioned in her journal on 1 January 1869 as one of the tasks for the coming year. Middlemarch originates in two unfinished pieces that Eliot worked on during 18: the novel ' Middlemarch ' (which focused on the character of Lydgate) and the long story 'Miss Brooke' (which focused on the character of Dorothea). Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education.

Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. It appeared in eight instalments (volumes) in 18. Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by the English author Mary Anne Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life at Wikisource

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