On this date in 1869, George Eliot began work on her novel, Middlemarch. 10 things you might not know about this book.
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The subtitle is “A Study of Provincial Life.”
The novel is set in a fictional town in the Midlands of England, from from 1829 to 1832, called, yes, you guessed it, Middlemarch. It’s characters include members of all social classes in the town: landed gentry, clergy, doctors and professionals, farmers, and labourers.
It’s written in the style of realism, which is a literary genre which attempts to show life as it really is, focussing on everyday activities and the mundane aspects of life. In later times, the kitchen sink drama is a modern example of realism. In Middlemarch, things that were in the news at the time form a backdrop – the Reform Act 1832, early railways, the accession of King William IV and advances in medicine.
It first appeared as a series of eight books in 1871 and 1872. This was at a time when three volumes was the norm. George Eliot had been concerned that the novel she was writing was too long, but the publisher John Blackwood suggested that the novel be brought out in eight two-monthly parts, as Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables had been.
In 1869, George Eliot made a new year’s resolution to write a novel called Middlemarch which was essentially the story of the doctor, Lydgate. She listed this in her journal on New Year’s Day 1869 as one of her tasks for the year, although she didn’t start writing until August. She was also writing a separate story entitled Miss Brooke, which was Dorothea’s story.
The process of writing doesn’t even go smoothly for the greatest novelists. Eliot began writing in August, but by September was in the middle of a crisis of confidence about it. Also real life was getting in the way as her partner’s son was dying of tuberculosis, so she stopped writing it completely for a while.
While writing Middlemarch, Eliot collected hundreds of literary quotations, from poets, historians, playwrights, philosophers, and critics in eight different languages, which she kept in a notebook.
Middlemarch broke convention in a number of ways as well as the number of instalments mentioned above. Female writers of the time were expected to focus on the courtship stage of a relationship with marriage being the end goal, the happy ending. Eliot married her characters off early in the book and explored their marriages breaking down as they realise they’ve made a terrible mistake and married the wrong person. Some critics of the time dismissed Middlemarch as too gloomy for a “woman writer.” However, novelist Virginia Woolf called it “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
Middlemarch has been made into a TV series at least twice, and there’s even an opera based on it. Called Middlemarch in Spring, the music was written by Allen Shearer and the libretto by Claudia Stevens. The opera only deals with Dorothea’s story, and has a cast of just six.
It has never been made into a film although English director Sam Mendes is said to have considered it.
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