Showing results by author "George Eliot" in All Categories

Unabridged readings of four fictional masterpieces. Contained in this collection are four more enduring classics, read in full by some of the very best audiobook narrators. With over 32 hours of irresistible storytelling, tracked by chapter for ease of navigation, this is the perfect way to immerse yourself in these iconic works.

Unfairly accused of stealing money from his community’s church, Silas Marner has become bitter and misanthropic - and wealthy. One New Year’s Eve, however, he rescues a small child from the snowstorm outside and his life changes forever. A deeply moving exploration of loneliness and redemption, Silas Marner is a beloved and timeless classic. Dame Judi Dench brings its humanity to life with unmatchable warmth and elegance.

Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. What was it like to love, live, and rebel in Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries? These beloved British novels offer three dramatically different but universally recognisable experiences. Read by three luminaries of the stage and screen: Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, and Sir John Gielgud.

First published in 1861, The Mill on the Floss was a best-seller in its day. This classic novel explores the traditions and moral expectations of an English rural community. Maggie Tulliver is a girl of uncontrollable romantic ideals. But her brother, along with most of society, cannot accept her brashness and vitality. Narrator Jill Tanner gracefully unfolds this tragic tale of love and loss.

George Eliot's The Lifted Veil was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1859 and has now become one of the author's most widely read and critically discussed stories. Told from the point of view of a young, egocentric, and morbid clairvoyant man, Latimer, it is a dark fantasy portrait of an artist whose visionary powers merely blight his life. The story reflected the scientific interest of the time in the physiology of the brain, mesmerism, phrenology, and experiments in revivification.

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in 'the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis'. But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.

The is the heart-rending tale of carpenter Adam Bede's love for pretty, superficial Hetty Sorrel, her trial for the murder of her ilegitimate child, the plight of her seducer, and Adam's growing affection for Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher. Eliot's comments on pastoral life and the wisdom and candor of Mrs. Poyser add zest and humor.

Reputed to be Eliot's favorite novel, Silas Marner is set in the early years of the 19th century. Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small congregation in Lantern Yard. Falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit, he leaves his home and lives a solitary life near the village of Raveloe. Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels.

Middlemarch is considered one of the masterpieces of English fiction. Published in 1874, it is the seventh and penultimate novel by George Eliot. It pursues a number of underlying themes, including the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism and self-interest, religion and hypocrisy, political reform, and education.

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans – an ironic ‘deception’ given that "Adam Bede", her first novel, is written unashamedly from a feminist standpoint. The story centres on a pastoral love triangle. Two young men, carpenter Adam Bede and squire Captain Arthur Donnithorne, are both in love with the mercurial Hetty Sorrel. There’s a further love interest between Adam and beautiful lay preacher Dinah Morris. The setting is a country village in the north of England in the last years of the eighteenth century.

Felix Holt, the Radical is the story of a young English nobleman, Harold Transome, and the idealist Felix Holt. Transome amasses a fortune while in the colonies and returns home to run for Parliament while taking a liking to one Esther Lyon, the daughter of a clergyman. Everything goes as planned until Felix Holt comes on the scene with his own radical ideas, determined to educate the working-class citizens on the value of integrity and the common man.

Novelists Egan ( The Keep), Hustvedt ( The Sorrows of an American), and Livesey ( The House on Fortune Street) along with actress Hope Davis --the group that entertainingly and illuminatingly explored Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice at this book club--return by popular demand to revisit George Eliot's classic.

Silas Marner is a gentle linen weaver who is framed for a heinous theft by his best friend. Exiled from the sphere of human trust and love, he becomes a recluse, caring only for the gold he receives for his work. But when an abandoned child mysteriously appears at his cottage one New Year's Eve, Silas discovers an unselfish love that will ultimately lead to his redemption.

In George Eliot's Middlemarch, the idea of marriage and vocation are explored through a small town's community of ordinary people. One of the main characters, Dorothea Brooke, is a kind and good-hearted woman who gives to the poor and helps to rebuild cottages of poor farmers. However, she is also stubborn and very strong-willed.

Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.America.

The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), which was first published in 1860. The book chronicles the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, who are siblings growing up at Dorlcote Mill situated at the junction of the River Floss and the River Ripple. Maggie is the main character, and the story begins when she is nine years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. The most important threads concern her relationship with her brother and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem and Stephen Guest.

Silas Marner is a selfless member of a tight Calvinist sect who's been framed for stealing the congregation's funds. Expelled from his community, he retreats to the rustic hamlet of Raveloe to spend the remainder of his life as a misanthropic hermit, devoted only to the fortune he amasses as a linen weaver. But when his gold is taken, Silas also feels robbed of what's left of his humanity. Then, one snowy New Year's Eve, an orphan girl comes in out of the storm and changes him forever.

Daniel Deronda is a clever and generous young man who has yet to find his true direction in life, much to the dismay of Sir Hugo, who has helped raise him. While in Germany, Daniel meets the attractive and headstrong Gwendolen, who's lost a fortune at the roulette table that her family cannot afford to lose, before returning to England. Back in London, Daniel rescues a singer Mirah from drowning herself, then begins to find purpose in helping her search for her family.

The stories are all set in New York City and concern themselves with various facets of life in Gilded Age New York City—from the highest of high society to the commonest pensioner in less fashionable neighborhoods in boarding houses. The stories are about manners and mores; about the people of various strata of society relating to each other and the world around them.

In this essay, originally published anonymously in The Westminster Review (1856), George Eliot examines the state of women’s fiction in her time. She lamentingly argues that absurd and banal novels, written by well-to-do women of her time, do great disservice for the overall appreciation of women’s intellectual capacities within society.