Book Description
The Clarendon edition of Adam Bede (1859) is the first critical edition of the work that established George Eliot's reputation. Its extensive textual apparatus lists manuscript and first edition variants from the copy-text, which is the corrected eighth edition of 1861 -- her last revision of the book. The introduction locates the genesis of the novel in Eliot's family history, her travels, and her reading of literature and biography, and describes the composition process, including her debate with the publisher John Blackwood about the suitability of the subject-matter for a family audience, as both author and publisher anticipated its appearing initially in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Using Blackwood's publication ledgers, it also establishes the details of the eleven complete or nearly complete resettings of the novel in Eliot's lifetime; and examines the author's revisions to a manuscript that is popularly, but erroneously, thought to have been little altered, giving detailed attention to the dialect in the context of more than 900 variants between manuscript and first edition.Download Description
George Eliot takes the well-worn tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire, and out if it creates a portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people -- their labors and loves, their beliefs, their speech. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

A love story as sophisticated as the author
Anybody who had fallen deeply in love would be touched by the character of Adam Bede.George Eliot's fecund words are reminiscence of a first kiss .... unforgettable.

Unqualified
As the title indicates, I feel quite unqualified to review the writings of George Eliot.But I did like the edition that Penguin classics puts out.It's sturdy, held up well being hauled around (never go anywhere without a book).I thought the explanatory notes at the end were quite thorough, and I enjoyed the editor's introduction.

Wonderful Storytelling
This is the first book that I have read by George Eliot. I have serveral others of hers but I alway seemed to have another book I wanted to read.In fact, I started Adam Bede once and was about 150 pages into and put it down.After 6 months or so, I decided to pick it back up and I am glad that I did.

This is a wonderful story about a person who is true to himself and to those around him.This is also a story about how the actions of a person affect more than that person and those immediately involved.

The only problem I had with the story (and thus the 4 stars) was the dialect of the language used in the book.It is difficult to get used to the dialect and it is difficult to know what the character is trying to say.However, after the first 200 pages, I did get the hang of it but it was difficult going at first.In fact, it was because of that difficulty that I put the book down before.

I was glad to have read this book.It does have a shocking part to it though it is subtle at first.What really helped me was to read several chapters and then go the the sparknotes and read them to make sure I had not missed anything which was a big help in fully understanding the story. I would recommend that if you read this book, read the sparknotes after every 4 or 5 chapters.

I would also recommend this book to anyone that likes Thomas Hardy and espcially his "Far from the Madding Crowd."I loved "Madding Crowd" and this book reminded me of it.

I truly recommend this book to anyone that likes English Classic Literature.Once you get the hang of the dialect you will like this story.If you read this one and have not read Thomas Hardy's "Madding Crowd" I would recommend that you read that one as well.

Adam is Good: Hetty Is A Flirt: They Have No Choice
When George Eliot published her first novel ADAM BEDE in 1859, unknown to her reading public, she had just ushered in a new era of the English novel. Beginning with this novel, Eliot infused her novels with an overwhelming sense of determinism, a then popular philosophy that suggested that man's voyage through life, that when set by nature, society, or even by himself, was etched in stone.If literary characters were to pursue a course of action that was taken willingly, then that character had to live with the consequences, however unpleasant.The primary characters of the book, Adam himself, Arthur Donnithorne, and Hetty Sorrel, are seen as limited in their ability to avoid the ramifications of their actions.

Adam Bede is portrayed as the quintessential man of good. Indeed one of the problems that modern readers have with him is that in his goodness, he is essentially a flat character, whose goodness towards others and anger towards Donnithorne, all stem from that same well of virtue.Adam falls in love with the flighty and flirty Hetty Sorrel, and is prepared to marry her, until he catches her passionately embracing his childhood friend, the aristocratic Donnithorne. The two men fight, the consequences of which set in motion a sequence of events that do not allow for mitigation of circumstance.In Hetty Sorrel, Eliot has created a woman whom she seems to judge overly harshly.Hetty truly is a flirt, and a passionate one at that, but to subject her to a non-stop series of painful retributions merely because of Hetty's willingness to sleep with the object of her youthful dreams, Donnithorne, suggests that Eliot began the book with a deck stacked partially against Adam but totally against her. And then there is Donnithorne, one who is supposed to be the villain, yet he is far less the villain as Eliot tries mightily to portray him just as Adam is far less the understanding hero as Eliot tries just as mightily to depict him.As Adam and Donnithorne battle each other for possession of the fickle Hetty, the lovely preacher Dinah Morris has been patiently waiting for Adam to come to his senses and forget his infatuation with Hetty and recognize the virtuous treasure that Eliot wants the reader to see.

Readers today show a marked lack of patience with Eliot's frequent narrative intrusions.Editors call such intrusions the use of omniscient narrator, a style of writing popular in Eliot's day but passé today.Yet, there are many readers who enjoy the panoramic vistas and linguistic idiosyncrasies that Eliot draws of a countryside that even in her day was fixed in the roots of an earlier 18th century cultural milieu. For those who do not mind Eliot's sometimes all too frequent helpful and sometimes unwanted comments, ADAM BEDE can be a welcome read in that it is a living reminder of how people may not escape the consequences of their actions, no matter how hard they try.

The Worst of the Best
I love Marion Evans and expect others would enjoy her very much too.I'm writing this review to make sure that, if Adam Bede is your first experience with her, you not judge her by it and, if there is anything you find you like in it, that you go on and read more by her... Silas Marner, Middlemarch, essays, etc.

Adam Bede is, if I recall correctly, one of her earliest (if not first) extended works... the rest only get better.It is the only one that I would give less than five stars.There's really only one thing that mars it.

But first, what's good about it?Well, there's her deeply probing, psychological characterizations that leave all of her characters fully understood by the reader.We may love, admire, sympathize with, hope for, dislike, or disapprove of them.But we always understand them.Even the most minor characters or bit parts get well-developed.She puts more into a characterization of dogs than some writers do of humans... and it's clear that she loves them both very much!

Then there's her beautifully dense english:within a single sentence she can present a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.She has the most charitable way of using irony I've ever encountered.Also, she was very much to British vernacular what Mark Twain was to American vernacular.This is especially marked in Adam Bede and may lead some people to shy away from it.

Also, she takes on the big issues of her day... political and religious change, the position of women and the otherwise disenfranchised, etc... in a way and to an extent that no one else in her day was doing.It's somewhat stealthy at times, being cloaked in the lives of the individuals who are affected by the issues.Not infrequently her own views come, comically, from the mouths of those who must otherwise be taken to least likely represent them... very sly.An example from Middlemarch flows from the nontraditional Dorothea's very traditional sister: "Oh, women are better than men at most everything [Dorothea smiling in response and her sister catching herself]... excepting of course the things they're not I mean!".I think her writing definitely stands the test of time.

Now what's bad?One thing only... Adam Bede has one radical plot twist that's either physiologically impossible or relies on the unbelievable ignorance of most of the characters.I can only imagine that the twist was less perverse to the Victorian reader's sensibility but it left me cold near the end of an otherwise warm, engaging, moving work by a great writer.
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Book Description
In the first half of the nineteenth century in England there was a strong interest in German literature and German scholarship. George Eliot studied German and German literature from the age of twenty. Her first publication, in 1846, was a translation of Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu; followed, in 1854, by the translation of Ludwig Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums. That same year George Eliot left England with George Henry Lewes on her first visit to Germany. During the next three months they visited Frankfurt, Weimar and Berlin to collect material for Lewes's biography of Goethe. In this study, Gerlinde RÖder-Bolton explores the impact of Goethe on George Eliot, whose "elective affinity" with Goethe was both ethical and artistic, and analyses George Eliot's responsiveness to Goethe's moral vision and the literary uses she makes of her familiarity with Goethe's work. George Eliot and Goethe: An Elective Affinity concentrates on The Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda, showing how the intertextual relationship with Die Wahlverwandtschaften holds the key to an understanding of the latter part of The Mill on the Floss, while the first part of Faust and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre throw new light on Daniel Deronda. This study, with its close analysis of a range of works by George Eliot and Goethe, is essential reading for anyone interested in both or either of these authors or in Anglo-German literary relations. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
In this innovative study Nancy Henry introduces new facts that place George Eliot's life and work within the contexts of mid-nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism. She examines Eliot's roles as an investor in colonial stocks, a parent to emigrant sons, and a reader of colonial literature. She highlights the importance of these contexts to our understanding of Eliot's fiction and her position within Victorian culture. The book also reexamines the assumptions of postcolonial criticism about Victorian fiction and its relation to empire.Download Description
In this innovative study Nancy Henry introduces a new set of facts that place George Eliot's life and work within the contexts of mid nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism. Henry examines Eliot's roles as an investor in colonial stocks, a parent to emigrant sons, and a reader of colonial literature. She highlights the importance of these contexts to our understanding of both Eliot's fiction and her situation within Victorian culture. Henry argues that Eliot's decision to represent the empire only as it infiltrated the imaginations and domestic lives of her characters illuminates the nature of her Realism. The book also re-examines the assumptions of postcolonial criticism about Victorian fiction and its relation to empire. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Nothing wrong with the way this book was written
"No one has examined the poems more sensitively or set down his results more lucidly.His analyses of 'The Waste Land' and of many other poems are the most complete, reliable, and forthright yet written; they are the product of a deep and long knowledge of Eliot's work."

--Richard Ellman

Cull your highschool essays from here..
I've not been well pleased by this book. Though some of its insights are valuable, and though it is somewhat well researched and fairly comprehensive, it's a chore to read. The author has a style that borders on the incomprehensible -- one feels that he is one of these people who uses tortuous turns of phrase in the mistaken belief that they'll make him seem sophisticated. As a result, the text is disjointed and difficult, its arguments meandering and ill-defined. Williamson has some good ideas, and probably knows what he means, but doesn't get his points across clearly -- it's almost as though he's trying to emulate Eliot's style (or to merely restate the poetry as prose) and, frankly, one often feels as though Williamson has ideas above his station.

In short, this has all of the hallmarks of high school essay-writing -- perhaps the author has spent too long in the company of his students. Using 'difficult' language is neither big nor clever if it serves only to obfuscate meaning; here, the wealth of double-negatives, run-on sentences and unexplained, bewildering conjecture is simply not helpful to the reader of an already difficult poet. If the reader works at it, he or she will gleam some benefit from this book - but there are far better, and better written, works out there. If in doubt, take a look at the excerpts on this site -- it may be that the rather purple prose will appeal to some readers; but I regret that where I had hoped for intelligent discourse, I instead found awkwardly adolescent writing that thought itself more clever than it actually was. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Frederick Karl's magisterial biography of George Eliot proves her to be one of the most fascinating and iconic individuals of her time. Karl, author of commanding biographies of Conrad, Faulkner, and Kafka, meticulously brings Eliot to life. He re-creates her world, London society, and intellectual thought, as well as the world of the gifted or fortunate. He shows how Eliot transformed herself, taking new names as her self developed and grew. With his discussion of Eliot's life, Karl portrays what life was was like for a woman during that time and identifies important women's issues.

Eliot, torn between her desire to conserve the past and her urge to change the limitations imposed by class and gender, proves to be a fascinating individual beckoning towards our twentieth-century sense of the modern. Karl's is an unforgettable portrait of a writer whose profound works are recognized today as literary masterpieces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Study of an Amazing Intellect
George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evens, author of arguably the greatest novel in the Victorian era, Middlemarch, was not just an author but an intellectual giant. She translated works of philosophy from the German and from Latin; knew and exchanged ideas with the brightest minds of the time; was fluent in 7 languages (French, Italian, German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Spanish), and was compelled by a natural curiosityto acquire knowledge all through her life.

Her life with a married man created a Victorian scandal, yet by the time of her death in 1880 she was Englandýs most celebrated author visited even by Queen Victoriaýs daughters.

This biography is a thorough, accessible and engrossing book. Author Karl is a fan of Eliotýs yet hides none of her blemishes. While he generally refuses to speculate on a lot of Victorian gossip regarding her life, he at times annoys the reader with some unwarranted attempts to psychoanalyze her (I do get tired of the injection of Freud into literature). The slowest parts of the book deal with her frequenttrips to Europe. We learn what she did on Tuesday in Berlin, and then her activities in Hamburg on Wednesday. While I realize that the recording of such information is important in providing a fairly complete detail ofher life, I tend to nod a bit at the lengthy reports of her travels.

Historically we are blessed with a huge number of extant correspondence of Eliot. The author makes good use of these letters, yet the book does not turn into an epistolary work i.e. a book of nothing but verbatim letters.

One of my purely personal problems with the book was that I have not read all of Eliotýs novels. Mr. Karl, of necessity perhaps, relates much of the plots of her books, and thus creates a real spoiler for the novels that I havenýt read. Thatýs my problem, of course, and not the authorýs.

It would seem that people today are probably unaware of this important author who was known throughout England during her writing lifetime. Her novels and her life are an important part of the literary canon. I heartily recommend this well crafted book

The Study of an Amazing Intellect
George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evens, author of arguably the greatest novel in the Victorian era, Middlemarch, was not just an author but an intellectual giant. She translated works of philosophy from the German and from Latin; knew and exchanged ideas with the brightest minds of the time; was fluent in 7 languages (French, Italian, German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Spanish), and was compelled by a natural curiosityto acquire knowledge all through her life.

Her life with a married man created a Victorian scandal, yet by the time of her death in 1880 she was England's most celebrated author visited even by Queen Victoria's daughters.

This biography is a thorough, accessible and engrossing book. Author Karl is a fan of Eliot's yet hides none of her blemishes. While he generally refuses to speculate on a lot of Victorian gossip regarding her life, he at times annoys the reader with some unwarranted attempts to psychoanalyze her (I do get tired of the injection of Freud into literature). The slowest parts of the book deal with her frequenttrips to Europe. We learn what she did on Tuesday in Berlin, and then her activities in Hamburg on Wednesday. While I realize that the recording of such information is important in providing a fairly complete detail ofher life, I tend to nod a bit at the lengthy reports of her travels.

Historically we are blessed with a huge number of extant correspondence of Eliot. The author makes good use of these letters, yet the book does not turn into an epistolary work i.e. a book of nothing but verbatim letters.

One of my purely personal problems with the book was that I have not read all of Eliot's novels. Mr. Karl, of necessity perhaps, relates much of the plots of her books, and thus creates a real spoiler for the novels that I haven't read. That's my problem, of course, and not the author's.

It would seem that people today are probably unaware of this important author who was known throughout England during her writing lifetime. Her novels and her life are an important part of the literary canon. I heartily recommend this well crafted book ... Read more

Product Description
With etching of the authoress. 492pp. SAMPLE CONTENTS: Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: the Poet Young; German Wit: Heinrich Heine; Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming; The Influence of Rationalism: Lecky's History; The Natural History of German Life: Riehl; Three Months in Weimar; Address to Working Men; etc. etc. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Particularly recommended for college libraries
[..]Written by Monika Mueller (teaches American and English literature at the University of Cologne, Germany), George Elliot U.S.: Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Perspectives is an extensive work of literary criticism and analysis that explores the complicated and reciprocal relationship between George Elliot's fiction and the writings of her American contemporaries, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Fuller, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. George Elliot U.S. also scrutinizes Elliot's lasting influence on American fiction to the modern day, and particularly contemplates modern American adaptions of her work.

The evolution of a postdoctoral thesis, George Elliot U.S. is a highly scholarly and seminal contribution to literary criticism shelves, and particularly recommended for college libraries and students of Elliot's works. ... Read more

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Vol 1 as arranged and edited by her husband. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more