Middlemarch

First published in 1871-72, this novel is set in a Midlands town on the eve of the 1832 Reform Act. Dorothea Brooke, an ardent young woman, marries the elderly scholar Edward Casaubon and finds the marriage a confinement; her sister Celia chooses a safer match. Tertius Lydgate arrives to practise scientific medicine and is drawn into the town's hospital politics and into marriage with Rosamond Vincy. Parallel strands follow Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, the banker Nicholas Bulstrode, and the landowning Brooke-Chettam circle. The book studies vocation, money, and marriage as they collide with provincial opinion and with the limits each character can see.

Quarter bound in purple cloth with gilt title label on spine, purple patterned covers. Purple slipcase.