Showing results by author "George Eliot" in All Categories

The Lifted Veil is a novella by George Eliot, first published in 1859. Quite unlike the realistic fiction for which Eliot is best known, The Lifted Veil explores themes of extrasensory perception, the essence of physical life, possible life after death, and the power of fate. This book has been carefully adapted into modern English to allow for easy listening. Enjoy!

This classic novel takes place in Lantern Yard, a slum street in an unnamed city in Northern England, during the early 19th century. There, Silas Marner, a weaver and a member of a small Calvinist congregation, is falsely accused of stealing the congregation's funds while watching over their very ill deacon. Two pieces of evidence are against Silas: his possession of a pocket knife and the bag that formerly contained the money.

Here is a tale straight from the fireside. We are compelled to follow the humble and mysterious figure of the linen weaver Silas Marner on his journey from solitude and exile to the warmth and joy of family life. His path is a strange one - and from desolate misery comes triumphant joy.

This novel is based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. As the headstrong Maggie Tulliver grows into womanhood, the deep love which she has for her brother Tom turns into conflict, because she cannot reconcile his bourgeois standards with her own lively intelligence. Maggie is unable to adapt to her community or break free from it, and the result, on more than one level, is tragedy.

Praised by Virginia Woolf as one of the only novels "written for grown-up people", Middlemarch is a highly accomplished story, whose characters are involving and intriguing. Dorothea's story interlinks powerfully and tantalisingly with that of Lydgate's, a doctor, who joins her for a some of her journey towards making sense of her role in the world, both as a woman and as an idealist.

In a hole under the floorboards Silas Marner the linen-weaver keeps his gold. Every day he works hard at his weaving, and every night he takes the gold out and holds the bright coins lovingly, feeling them and counting them again and again. The villagers are afraid of him and he has no family, no friends. Only the gold is his friend, his delight, his reason for living. But what if a thief should come in the night and take his gold away?

An absorbing, semi-philosphical tale of love and people driven to extremes. Our hero, a carpenter, loves Hetty Sorel, but she loves Arthur Donnington, a local squire. The story soon progresses onto powerful themes, such as: who has the right to determine who lives and who dies?

Silas Marner is a member of a small Christian congregation in Lantern Yard who is accused of stealing the congregation's funds while sitting with a very ill elder of the group. Embittered by the false accusation, Silas retreats to his loom and to count his hoard of gold. The loss of his treasure and the arrival of a foundling child eventually teaches him what being truly rich means.

Poetry is often cited as our greatest use of words. The English language has well over a million of them and poets down the ages seem, at times, to make use of every single one. But often they use them in simple ways to describe anything and everything from landscapes to all aspects of the human condition. Poems can evoke within us an individual response that takes us by surprise; that opens our ears and eyes to very personal feelings.

Maggie Tulliver has two lovers: Philip Wakem, son of her father's enemy; and Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin; but the love she wants most in the world is that of her brother Tom. Maggie's struggle against her passionate and sensual nature leads her to a deeper understanding and to eventual tragedy.

An intriguing collection of short stories by some of the greatest women fiction writers of the last century. The Lifted Veil – George Eliot Miss Brill – Katherine Mansfield The Fly – Katherine Mansfield The Jew’s Beech Tree – Annette von Droste-Hülshoff The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman Mansize in Marble – Edith Nesbit

Maggie and Tom, brother and sister, try to save their livelihood as their parents flounder in the face of modernization. Maggie befriends the disabled son of a family rival in an attempt to build bridges, and Tom fights hard to reclaim the family property. Having drifted apart, they are brought back together in the novel's dramatic and moving conclusion.

"It’s a woman. She’s dead, I think--dead in the snow at the Stone-pits--not far from my door." Since his arrival in the small village of Raveloe, Silas Marner has been an outsider. Nobody knows where he came from, nobody understands him, nobody dares to invite him in. All of this changes when a little girl wanders through his door one snowy night. What feelings will she stir in Silas’ lonely heart? How will she draw Silas closer to the heart of Raveloe?

An unsettling anthology of short stories featuring crazed characters, from the mildly eccentric to the criminally insane. 1. "The Tell-tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe 2. "The Green Light" by Barry Pain 3. "A Madman’s Manuscript" by Charles Dickens 4. "His Brother’s Keeper" by W. W. Jacobs 5. "The Dream" by A. J. Alan 6. "Query" by Seamark 7. "Old Fags" by Stacy Aumonier 8. "The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau" by Ludwig Achim von Arnhem 9. "The Mines of Falun" by E. T. A. Hoffmann

Why is this feeling of regret so familiar to her? Why must she always wish she had done something different? Maggie Tulliver and her brother, Tom, grow up in the mill on the River Floss. Although Maggie adores Tom, she often finds him cruel and cold. All she wants is for life to be full and warm.The Tulliver family’s traditional way of living is threatened by changes beyond their control. Will the educated world of lawyers and lawsuits destroy what generations have enjoyed?

Outcast from the church, community, and close friends for a crime he did not commit, Silas Marner's trust and faith falls away. A broken, disillusioned man, he builds a new faith, that will never let him down: gold. He weaves his cloths, counts his money, baptises himself with the coins of his new religion. When tragedy strikes again and all his money is stolen he's bereft and grief stricken. Then on New Year's Eve a vision of gold flickers before the flames.

One of George Eliot's most intriguing works. During a period of illness, Latimer first discovers an unusual ability. He is able to read other peoples' minds and see visions of the future. Rather than being a gift, this strange phenomenon increasingly becomes a curse. But the one thing that keeps him going is his love for Bertha who Latimer knows will one day marry him, and who is the one person whose thoughts remain a mystery to him.

Embittered by a false accusation, disappointed in friendship and love, the weaver Silas Marner hoards a treasure that destroys his spirit until fate steals it from him and replaces it with a golden-haired child. Where she came from, who her parents were, and who really stole the gold are the secrets that fill this moving tale of guilt and innocence.

’If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?’ Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie's fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines.

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in 'the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis'. But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.