Middlemarch Resources

Movie or TV Productions

New Middlemarch adaptation coming out in 2010

We don't know much about this one, since the casting information hasn't been posted as this guide was being written, but we do know that the screenplay is by Andrew Davies (who did the BBC Pride and Prejudice), and that it's slated to be directed by Sam Mendes (of American Beauty fame).

1994 BBC mini-series

This is probably the best adaptation of Middlemarch to date.

Middlemarch, 1968

Another mini-series.

Videos

Sketching Mr. Casaubon as St. Thomas Aquinas

This is a clip from the 1994 miniseries.

Dinner conversation with Mr. Casaubon

Another clip from the 1994 mini-series

Breakfast at the Vincys' house

From the 1994 mini-series.

Images

Sketch of Marian Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot

In the words of American modernist writer Henry James, "[Eliot] is magnificently ugly – deliciously hideous...in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her."

Painting of Marian Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot

This is a slightly more flattering picture of her.

Portrait of George Henry Lewes, Eliot's long-term lover

This man had some crazy facial hair.

Portrait of a young woman by Rembrandt

Mary Garth is described as looking like a young woman in a Rembrandt painting: not pretty, but with a kind of timelessness to her.

Documents

"Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative In Darwin, George Eliot, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction"

This is an article by literary critic Gillian Beer about evolution in Middlemarch (and other Victorian novels).

"George Eliot, Positivism, and the Social Vision of 'Middlemarch'"

This is an article by critic James F. Scott.

"Philosophy in the Bedroom: Middlemarch and the Scandal of Sympathy"

A recent article by critic Hina Nazar.

"Middlemarch and the Woman Question"

An article by Kathleen Blake in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

"History by Indirection: The Era of Reform in Middlemarch"

An older article by Jerome Beaty – excellent source if you're interested in the political context of Middlemarch.

"Middlemarch and History"

An article by Michael York Mason

"Ladislaw and the Middlemarch Vision"

An article by Jane Marie Luecke

"Allusive Mischaracterization in Middlemarch"

An article by Claudia Moscovici

"Unity Through Analogy: An Interpretation of Middlemarch"

This is an older article by David R. Carroll

"Middlemarch: Touching Down"

An article by Calvin Bedient

Other

The Victorian Web

www.victorianweb.org is a great online resource if you're studying 19th-century British literature. This is a link to their overview page on Eliot.

George Eliot Biography

This is a good, reliable source on Eliot's biography.

Eliot quotations

Eliot was so quotable that one of her super fans, Alexander Main, actually published a collection during her life, entitled "The Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot." You can check Main's collection out at a library; this is just a webpage with a lot of bon mots by Eliot collected by modern super fans.