George Eliot

This Norton Critical Edition of George Eliot's highly regarded novel of provincial English life is based on the 1874 edition, the last corrected by the author. Ample explanatory annotation has been provided by the editor. "Backgrounds" elucidates Eliot's ideas on life and art with generous selections from her letters, journals, essays, and other fictional works. "Recent Criticism" collects eleven essays—seven of them new to the Second Edition—that center on the novel's major themes. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Written by an international team of scholars, the Companion offers a wealth of biographical and historical information that illuminates Eliot's work. There are entries on all her novels (including plot synopses), stories, and important essays, plus coverage of poetry and translations, letters and journals, and notebooks and manuscripts. A long entry surveys her life, and shorter entries discuss her family, friends, and acquaintances, the places she lived and the countries she visited, and the writers, thinkers, artists, and composers whose work she knew.