Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
George Eliot: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
Appendix A: George Eliot’s Essays, Reviews, and Criticism
“Woman in France: Madame de Sablé,” Westminster Review (October
1854)
“The Morality of Wilhelm Meister,” The Leader (21 July
1855)
From “Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft,” The Leader (13
October 1855)
From Review of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters (1856),
Westminster Review (April 1856)
From “The Natural History of German Life,” Westminster Review
(July 1856)
“Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” Westminster Review (October
1856)
Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews of Middlemarch
From Edward Dowden, “George Eliot,” Contemporary Review (August
1872)
From Richard Holt Hutton, review of Middlemarch, Spectator (7
December 1872)
From Edith Simcox, “Middlemarch,” Academy (1 January 1873)
From [Henry James], unsigned review, Galaxy (March 1873)
[William Hurrell Mallock], unsigned review of Impressions of
Theophrastus Such (1879), Edinburgh Review (October 1879)
Margaret Oliphant, Chapter XI, “Of the Younger Novelists,” The
Victorian Age of English Literature (1882)
From Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg, first Baron Acton,
“George Eliot’s Life,” Nineteenth Century (March 1885)
Virginia Woolf, “George Eliot,” Times Literary Supplement (20
November 1919)
Appendix C: Historical Documents: Medical Reform, Religious
Freedom, and the Advent of the Railroads
From “The Apothecaries Act” (1815)
From “The Roman Catholic Relief Act” (1829)
From “An Act to amend the representation of the people in
England and Wales” (1832)
From “An Act for regulating Schools of Anatomy” (1832)
Liverpool and Manchester Railroad Company Prospectus
(1824)
From [Commentary on the projected Liverpool and Manchester
Railway], Quarterly Review (March 1825)
From “An Act to consolidate and amend the Acts relating to the
Property of Married Women” (1882)
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Gregory Maertz is an Associate Professor of
English at Saint John’s University in New York City. He is the
editor of Cultural Interactions in the Romantic Age (SUNY Press,
1998).
Reviews
“Broadview Press and editor Gregory Maertz have produced a text
whose rich but judicious contextual annotation, notably
highlighting Eliot’s deep immersion in German culture, makes this a
crucial edition of what is arguably the greatest Victorian novel of
them all.” — Michael McKeon, Rutgers University “Gregory Maertz’s
fine new edition of Middlemarch allows readers to consider the
novel in relation to a range of documents—reviews and other
writings by George Eliot, contemporary reviews of the novel, and
contextual material. This additional material both enriches our
reading of the novel and its concerns and expands our knowledge of
the period.” — Mark Turner, King’s College London
