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happylilkt's review against another edition
4.0
My mother mentioned this book to me after she finished reading [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747] last year. (Apparently in a fit of youthful, but misguided enthusiasm I had gifted a copy of George Eliot's masterpiece to her. But last year it fit nicely into one of her library reading challenge slots, so perhaps it was meant to be after all.)
I immediately ordered it, but I will confess that I had expected it to be more about the author [a:Rebecca Mead|241450|Rebecca Mead|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1369262808p2/241450.jpg] than about [a:George Eliot|173|George Eliot|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1596202587p2/173.jpg]. I am fond of the memoir genre, so I was mildly disappointed when I realized that this would instead be a biography of sorts. (I do like biographies, but they have a different vibe, amiright?) I slogged through for a bit, but then set it down for several months. It was the summer of 2020, after all, and comfort reading was calling me.
In December I picked it up a second time, knowing the book for what it was; and I was thoroughly enchanted. Expectations matter!
I can't claim a fraction of the knowledge and appreciation for Eliot and her novel that Mead possesses, but I can relate to Middlemarch as a literary touchstone in one's life. My introduction is very memorable:
The summer before my senior year of high school each student in my English lit class was required to pick an author to study from the Western canon. We were to pick 3 books from that author's oeuvre and read them all before the Fall term began. (We could not pick books we had already read, so the easy choice of Jane Austen was out.) I wanted to read a female author, but how to choose from a selection of authors I wasn't familiar with? Ah, but George Eliot, that one rang a bell...
(The summer I was 16 I had been at a church summer camp and seen a middle-aged camp counselor reading [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747]. When I had asked her about it, she stintingly informed me it was "a grown-up book.")
So naturally that conversation set my course: I would read George Eliot. The books: Adam Bede, Silas Marner, and Middlemarch. Obviously, I read the shorter books first. I loved [b:Silas Marner|54539|Silas Marner|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347323528l/54539._SY75_.jpg|3049535], did not much care for [b:Adam Bede|20563|Adam Bede|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1167298252l/20563._SY75_.jpg|21503633], and finally came to [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747].
I won't laud that book here, as I have already reviewed it, but after that first experience I have returned to Middlemarch again and again. The only books that rank higher in my literary lexicon are holy writ and [b:A Child's Christmas in Wales|563820|A Child's Christmas in Wales|Dylan Thomas|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348381389l/563820._SX50_.jpg|809138]. [b:Anna Karenina|155|Anna Karenina|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1288758122l/155._SY75_.jpg|2507928] and [b:Les Miserables|36377471|Les Miserables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509394980l/36377471._SY75_.jpg|3208463] would be worthy contemporaries, but I didn't read them until my mid-20s.
So, for those who admire George Eliot and specifically Middlemarch, this book is a delightful read. It meanders through her history and thoughtfully muses on Middlemarch's relevance for and influence on the individual, all with clear-eyed admiration.
And now with one last contented sigh, I need to go read Middlemarch again--but of course not for the last time.
I immediately ordered it, but I will confess that I had expected it to be more about the author [a:Rebecca Mead|241450|Rebecca Mead|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1369262808p2/241450.jpg] than about [a:George Eliot|173|George Eliot|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1596202587p2/173.jpg]. I am fond of the memoir genre, so I was mildly disappointed when I realized that this would instead be a biography of sorts. (I do like biographies, but they have a different vibe, amiright?) I slogged through for a bit, but then set it down for several months. It was the summer of 2020, after all, and comfort reading was calling me.
In December I picked it up a second time, knowing the book for what it was; and I was thoroughly enchanted. Expectations matter!
I can't claim a fraction of the knowledge and appreciation for Eliot and her novel that Mead possesses, but I can relate to Middlemarch as a literary touchstone in one's life. My introduction is very memorable:
The summer before my senior year of high school each student in my English lit class was required to pick an author to study from the Western canon. We were to pick 3 books from that author's oeuvre and read them all before the Fall term began. (We could not pick books we had already read, so the easy choice of Jane Austen was out.) I wanted to read a female author, but how to choose from a selection of authors I wasn't familiar with? Ah, but George Eliot, that one rang a bell...
(The summer I was 16 I had been at a church summer camp and seen a middle-aged camp counselor reading [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747]. When I had asked her about it, she stintingly informed me it was "a grown-up book.")
So naturally that conversation set my course: I would read George Eliot. The books: Adam Bede, Silas Marner, and Middlemarch. Obviously, I read the shorter books first. I loved [b:Silas Marner|54539|Silas Marner|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347323528l/54539._SY75_.jpg|3049535], did not much care for [b:Adam Bede|20563|Adam Bede|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1167298252l/20563._SY75_.jpg|21503633], and finally came to [b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568307771l/19089._SY75_.jpg|1461747].
I won't laud that book here, as I have already reviewed it, but after that first experience I have returned to Middlemarch again and again. The only books that rank higher in my literary lexicon are holy writ and [b:A Child's Christmas in Wales|563820|A Child's Christmas in Wales|Dylan Thomas|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348381389l/563820._SX50_.jpg|809138]. [b:Anna Karenina|155|Anna Karenina|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1288758122l/155._SY75_.jpg|2507928] and [b:Les Miserables|36377471|Les Miserables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509394980l/36377471._SY75_.jpg|3208463] would be worthy contemporaries, but I didn't read them until my mid-20s.
So, for those who admire George Eliot and specifically Middlemarch, this book is a delightful read. It meanders through her history and thoughtfully muses on Middlemarch's relevance for and influence on the individual, all with clear-eyed admiration.
And now with one last contented sigh, I need to go read Middlemarch again--but of course not for the last time.
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
Subtitled "My Life with George Eliot" this book is part personal memoir, part literary biography, and part literary analysis of Middlemarch and George Eliot's other works. It is structured so that the chapter headings correspond to the names of the Books in Middlemarch.
I have read Middlemarch and found it heavy going but this book has inspired me to read it again.
It's very readable and shows considerable insight into the book. It does the usual thing of trying to equate characters with people (was the then Rector of Lincoln College Oxford whom the model for Casaubon whom Eliot knew?: he had married late and unhappily to a much younger wife, his most ambitious book was never completed and he wrote a book about Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon) and fictional places with real places (was Middlemarch based on Coventry where Eliot lived for a while?: it had new hospitals and a new railway station at the right time).
It notes one or two inconsistencies (mistakes?) in the text:
It treats Dorothea's being an orphan with scant regard and is vague about when they died, saying it was when Dorothea and her younger sister were “about twelve years old" though they can’t both have been.
It points out that “For all Dorothea's purported longing to be learned she doesn't take much effort to educate herself, even though she has access to her uncle's no doubt well-stocked library.” (C 1)
But it is particularly interesting when Mead makes observations pertaining to the craft of the novelist:
She sees Middlemarch as Eliot’s “ ingenious revision of the marriage plot. What might happen if, if instead of ending with a wedding, a novel were to begin with one.” (C 1)
She notes that “The explicit intrusion of a narrator’s voice in Eliot's fiction can strike the contemporary ear as old-fashioned.” but Leslie “ Stephen suggests that Eliot's use of the magisterial authorial interjection is one of the things that make her novels suitable for grown up people. ... By directly addressing us, Eliot draws us deeper inside her panorama. ... We are granted a wider perspective, and a greater insight, then is available to their neighbours down in the world of Middlemarch.” (C 2)
This is a well-written, easily readable yet authoritative, introduction to the work of George Eliot, especially what is regarded as her masterpiece, Middlemarch
I have read Middlemarch and found it heavy going but this book has inspired me to read it again.
It's very readable and shows considerable insight into the book. It does the usual thing of trying to equate characters with people (was the then Rector of Lincoln College Oxford whom the model for Casaubon whom Eliot knew?: he had married late and unhappily to a much younger wife, his most ambitious book was never completed and he wrote a book about Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon) and fictional places with real places (was Middlemarch based on Coventry where Eliot lived for a while?: it had new hospitals and a new railway station at the right time).
It notes one or two inconsistencies (mistakes?) in the text:
It treats Dorothea's being an orphan with scant regard and is vague about when they died, saying it was when Dorothea and her younger sister were “about twelve years old" though they can’t both have been.
It points out that “For all Dorothea's purported longing to be learned she doesn't take much effort to educate herself, even though she has access to her uncle's no doubt well-stocked library.” (C 1)
But it is particularly interesting when Mead makes observations pertaining to the craft of the novelist:
She sees Middlemarch as Eliot’s “ ingenious revision of the marriage plot. What might happen if, if instead of ending with a wedding, a novel were to begin with one.” (C 1)
She notes that “The explicit intrusion of a narrator’s voice in Eliot's fiction can strike the contemporary ear as old-fashioned.” but Leslie “ Stephen suggests that Eliot's use of the magisterial authorial interjection is one of the things that make her novels suitable for grown up people. ... By directly addressing us, Eliot draws us deeper inside her panorama. ... We are granted a wider perspective, and a greater insight, then is available to their neighbours down in the world of Middlemarch.” (C 2)
This is a well-written, easily readable yet authoritative, introduction to the work of George Eliot, especially what is regarded as her masterpiece, Middlemarch
saranies's review against another edition
3.5
I thought this book was going to focus on Rebecca Mead; instead it was really about George Eliot. Really enjoyed it, a good complement to rereading Middlemarch.
khuizenga's review against another edition
3.0
I learned a lot about George Eliot and Middlemarch, although I wish I had read Middlemarch first (purely my fault). The organization of the book felt a little weird, with a lot of time jumps, and I’m not entirely sure what I was supposed to take away, but I liked the glimpse into Eliot’s life and how it played into her writing immensely.
sarahbaileyreads's review against another edition
4.0
A great companion piece to Middlemarch— would have loved more depth though.
heidihaverkamp's review against another edition
4.0
A quiet memoir, book study, and partial biography of George Eliot. Rebecca Mead visits places in Eliot's past, shares information about Eliot's life and struggles that were informative (although don't claim to be exhaustive) that she gleaned from a thorough examination of her letters, manuscripts, and other original documents, and reflects on the themes of the phenomenal novel of Middlemarch in ways that invite you to think about your own life. A quiet but lovely book.