grad F06+6919

2-04-01

repi

W

INTRODUCTION

HEN "The Spanish Gypsy" was still a year and more away from completion, George Eliot recorded in her journal a plan for "the construction of two prose works if possible." These were perhaps the novels "Middlemarch" and "Miss Brooke," which were eventually coalesced into one. In a letter to John Blackwood, too, about this time (March 21, 1867), she spoke of "private projects about an English novel." The reader of George Eliot's Life learns nothing more of these projects till he finds mentioned, among tasks she had set herself for the year 1869, "a novel called 'Middlemarch.”” By January 23 of that year she had "made a little way" in constructing it; but the work did not go rapidly at first, and it was not until the 2d of August that the actual writing was begun, with the Vincy and Featherstone part. "Miss Brooke," which, as Book I, opened the novel when it finally appeared, was started much later as a new and independent story, and the journal for December 2, 1870, noted the beginnings of it: "I am experimenting with a story which I began without any very serious intention of carrying it out lengthily. It is a subject which has been recorded among my possible themes ever since I began to write fiction, but will probably take new shape in the development." At the end of the year she had written the equivalent of a hundred printed pages of this story, which she had then decided to call "Miss Brooke." Work on the

original "Middlemarch," meanwhile, appears to have been at something of a standstill. On September 11, 1869, she wrote, "I do not feel very confident that I can make anything satisfactory of 'Middlemarch""; but she added, "I have need to remember that other things which have been accomplished by me were begun under the same cloud." There seems to be nothing to indicate when George Eliot determined to merge "Miss Brooke" with "Middlemarch," but it was probably before March 19, 1871, for on that date, in lamenting her failure, from languor and illness, to get things done, she wrote in her journal: "I have written about 236 pages (print) of my novel, which I want to get off my hands by next November. My present fear is that I have too much matter-too many momenti." The novel was by no means "off her hands" at the time she had hoped ; but substantial progress had been made and the first part was published on December 1. The book was issued by the Blackwoods in eight parts, which were published bimonthly at first, the last three numbers appearing at intervals of a month, however, - the final one at the beginning of December, 1872. The first part and each succeeding issue met with a reception quite beyond the author's "most daring hopes," which greatly encouraged her in her work; but the difficulties that always attended her composition were by no means absent. In September, 1872, when the novel was finished, she wrote to Mrs. Cross, "My life for the last year [has] been a sort of nightmare, in which I have been scrambling on the slippery bank of a pool, just keeping my head above water." There were times, too, of swift

and fervid writing, as in others of her novels; and of the dialogue between Dorothea and Rosamond we read that, "abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women."

During the three or four years when "Middlemarch" was writing, the author's home was at the Priory, Regent's Park, but a considerable part of each year was spent elsewhere. In the spring of 1869 a two months' visit to Italy was made, and the April and May of the following year were passed in Berlin and Vienna. The summer of 1870 was divided between the Priory, Cromer on the Norfolk coast, Harrogate and Whitby in Yorkshire, and Limpsfield in Surrey. The summer of 1871 was spent at Shottermill, Hampshire, and that of 1872 at Redhill, Surrey. At Shottermill the Leweses occupied Mrs. Anne Gilchrist's cottage, only three miles from Tennyson's house.

The method chosen for the publication of “Middlemarch" proved a profitable one, and the author's receipts were more than from "Romola." The American rights were sold for £1200. When the last part had appeared the whole book was published in four volumes at two guineas. A guinea edition was published in the spring of 1873, and in May of the following year a cheaper edition appeared, at 7s. 6d. Before Christmas, 1875, nearly twenty-five thousand copies of the book had been disposed of, including all the editions.

In returning to the English Midlands for the scene

of another novel, George Eliot availed herself but little of her memories of her early life there. Some of the characters, however, appear to have been drawn, to a greater or less extent, from actual persons, as had been her earlier habit. It is admitted that Caleb Garth derived some of his characteristics from the author's father; Mrs. Garth is said to bear a certain resemblance to George Eliot's mother; Celia Brooke may owe something to Christiana Evans, and Ladislaw to Lewes. Some of the author's own traits appear in Dorothea, though this must often be the case with heroes and heroines and their creators. "Of all the characters she had attempted," we learn from Mr. Cross, "she found Rosamond's the most difficult to sustain."

"Middlemarch,” though probably not George Eliot's most popular story, is yet regarded by many- and them perhaps the best judgesamong as her masterpiece. She herself is said to have rated it as her greatest novel. Mr. R. H. Hutton thinks that none of her other novels can compare with it "for delicacy of detail and completeness of finish and for the breadth of life brought within the field of the story." Miss Blind knows not "where else in literature to look for a work which leaves such a strong impression on the reader's mind of the intertexture of human lives." Mr. Oscar Browning calls it "a great prose epic" and considers that it "gives George Eliot the chiefest claim to stand by the side of Shakespeare."