Middlemarch

By the time the novel appeared to tremendous popular and critical acclaim in
1871-2, George Eliot was recognized as England's finest living novelist. It
was her ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--
tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in the rising provincial town of
Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and
suspense, «Middlemarch» is richer still in character, in its sense of how
individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community, and in the great
art that enlarges the reader's sympathy and imagination. It is truly, as
Virginia Woolf famously remarked, 'one of the few English novels written for
grown-up people'. "One of the few English novels written for grown-up people."
—Virginia Woolf "What do I think of ‘Middlemarch’? What do I think of glory —
except that in a few instances this 'mortal has already put on immortality.'
George Eliot was one. The mysteries of human nature surpass the 'mysteries of
redemption,' for the infinite we only suppose, while we see the finite."
—Emily Dickinson "‘Middlemarch’ is probably the greatest English novel."
—Julian Barnes "They've [women] produced the greatest writer in the English
language ever, George Eliot, and arguably the third greatest, Jane Austen, and
certainly the greatest novel, ‘Middlemarch’..." —Martin Amis