In the English village of Middlemarch in the early 1830s, Dorothea Brooke is a young idealist, busying herself with schemes to help the local poor. She shocks her family by marrying the middle-aged scholar Edward Causaubon and soon realises she has made a grave mistake and her feelings for him descend into pity.

Meanwhile, young doctor Tertius Lydgate, another idealist, arrives in Middlemarch intent on medical reform and discovery. Like Dorothea, his marriage to the town beauty and mayor’s daughter, Rosamond quickly descends into unhappiness.

Rosamond’s restless and irresponsible brother Fred is in love with his childhood sweetheart and in attempting to win her affections he is shocked into a reassessment of his life and actions.

These key stories are skilfully interwoven alongside various side plots and serve to paint a vast and detailed portrait not only of a town but of humanity in general, with all its strengths and weaknesses. Middlemarch gives us a razor sharp, yet compassionate insight into how individuals deal with the changes and struggles of everyday life.

By George Eliot