George Eliots beloved classic novelhailed by Virginia Woolf as masterfulfollows the life, loves, foibles, and politics of the residents of a fictional English town set amid the social unrest of the Industrial Revolution. This beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Editionwith special cover effects and French flapsincludes an introduction by award-winning author Francine Prose.

Dorothea Brooke married Edward Casaubona clergyman and scholar some years her seniornaively hoping their union would be a true meeting of the minds. Trapped in a lonely marriage to a tyrannical man, she finds companionship with Edwards cousin, but her overtures risk her spotless reputation and jeopardize her future.

Young doctor Tertius Lydgate comes to Middlemarch full of progressive ideas, eager to volunteer his skill at the local hospital. Through his connections there he meets the mayors beautiful daughter, Rosamond Vincy, and marries her, only to face financial ruin at the hands of her materialism and overwhelming vanity.

Rosamonds brother, Fred, is destined for the Church to improve his familys class standing, but his childhood sweetheart, Mary Garth, refuses to marry him unless he pursues a more suitable career. Forced by fate into uncertain financial circumstances, Fred must question his choices and desires if he hopes to earn Marys respect.

God-fearing and esteemed, Nicholas Bulstrode is a good man and trustworthy bankeror so it appears until an old enemy comes to town, intent on revealing Bulstrodes shady past dealings. Terrified of being exposed as a hypocrite, he takes matters into his own hands, each desperate act spiraling him further into disgrace and corruption.

A masterwork of fiction,Middlemarchtraces these four lives in a plot that illuminates the social fabric of mid-nineteenth-century England. Looming above the landscape of Victorian literature, Eliots beloved novel explores the perennial struggle between individual and society, integrity and temptation, and is as timely today as when it was first published.