ROAD TO MIDDLEMARCH: My Life with George Eliot

A poignant testimony to the power of fiction, the New Yorker writer revisits George Eliot's classic which she has read every five years since the age of 17. Published when George Eliot was 51, Middlemarch has at its centre one of literature's most compelling and ill-fated marriages, and some of the most tenderly drawn characters, incorporating their ordinary lives and their most intimate struggles. Mead explores how the ambitions, dreams and attachments of its characters teach us to value the limitations of our everyday lives and she interweaves readings with an investigation into the author's unconventional, inspiring life and Mead's reflection on her own youth, relationships and marriage. A winning blend of personal memoir and literary biography which will send you scampering eagerly back to the classic novel. Luckily we have it in stock in Wordsworth Classic code 23796. Paperback, 304pp.