Subtitled  'A Study of Provincial Life', George Eliot creates a richly woven tapestry of the kind of society she knew well, permeated with  her unique compassion and understanding. Set at a time of change in the early nineteenth century, her characters, their motives, feelings, actions and interactions form a compelling narrative.

Dorothea Brooke longs to escape from her conventional genteel upbringing and do some good in the world, while newcomer Dr Lydgate's idealism is thwarted by circumstances and his own fatal, but all too human, flaws. Casaubon the dry scholar faces the extinction of his life's work, while the banker Bulstrode hides a terrible secret. In this myriad of fully-realised, living, breathing human beings, we will recognise our neighbours, our enemies  and - if we are honest enough - ourselves, making this novel an absorbing read in any age.