Middlemarch

Set in a provincial English town in the years just before the 1832 Reform Act, this sweeping novel follows several lives whose hopes keep colliding with the limits of money, marriage, and small-town opinion. Dorothea Brooke, an idealistic young woman, ties herself to a dry older scholar in search of a great purpose; the ambitious Dr. Lydgate arrives with plans to reform medicine, only to be worn down by debt and a pretty, unyielding wife. Around them Eliot builds a whole community of clergymen, bankers, and farmers, tracing how private choices ripple outward through a town. Often called the finest English novel of the nineteenth century, it is remarkable for its moral intelligence and its sympathy for ordinary failure. This free PDF and EPUB edition presents the complete work.