I suppose I am dull about many things,’ said Dorothea, simply. ‘I should like to make life beautiful – I mean everybody’s life … It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from it.’

‘I call that the fanaticism of sympathy,’ said Will impetuously. (Middlemarch, chapter 22)

I’m very excited to be teaching a 5 week course on George Eliot’s Middlemarch, starting on September 24.

I’ve always wanted to spend more time on Middlemarch and finally I have my wish.

Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life first appeared in eight paper-bound instalments between December 1871 to December 1872. It began as two novels which Eliot gradually fused together, becoming many kinds of novel in the process. It is a historical novel, looking back 40 years to the period just before the Great Reform Act of 1832, and reflecting on the political turmoil of the 1860s. It is a multiple Bildungsroman,or novel of education, following a number of young people – Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate but also Fred and Rosamond Vincy, and Mary Garth – who must learn how to live in a complicated, imperfect world. It is novel about generational conflict, and a critical account of the social and political complexities of provincial life. It is a novel of revenge, compromise and corruption and, of course, it is a love story, but not a romance.

We’ll be exploring some of the key contexts in which it was originally written, published and read, to understand the experimental challenge Middlemarch made/makes to the novel’s form.

The course is fully subscribed but I’m going to post here about our weekly discussions.

In the first week, we’ll be discussing the first two parts, ‘Miss Brooke’ and ‘Old and Young’ in which most of the main characters make disastrous decisions. Central to this is their point of view and how they see the world.

Further reading and listening

Novel Readings is a great website and there are many essays about Middlemarch on it. One about the complex and challenging morality of Middlemarch is particularly interesting https://rohanmaitzen.com/research/open-letters-monthly-archive/the-morality-of-middlemarch/

In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 also has a good episode on the novel: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z1dd7

The George Eliot Archive has a huge amount of material by and about Eliot including reviews of the period: https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/52595

Do check out the Highgate Scientific and Literary Institution in London where I teach. There are many great events and courses https://hlsi.org.uk/

I don’t usually include my own work in these lists but this could be helpful for thinking about the genres and publishing contexts of the novel. https://rachelmalik.com/2019/08/24/re-reading-middlemarch-again/