David Daiches on Middlemarch: 1963

The first of what is hoped will be an occasional series of Critical and Scholarly Reflections from the Past on George Eliot, Her Life and Work. Particularly appropriate given the 150th anniversary of the publication of Middlemarch, the first is an extract from David Daiches’s seventy-two-page monograph discussion of George Eliot: Middlemarch in the “Studies in English Literature” series of which he was the General Editor, published by Edward Arnold. According to the blurb on the inside dust jacket, “this series is designed to provide students of individual plays, novels and groups of poems and essays, which are known to be widely studied in Six Forms and in universities. The emphasis is on clarification and evaluation; biographical facts are subordinated to critical discussion.” The series appeared in the United States as “Barron’s Studies in English and Continental Literature.” The extract follows a brief exposition of Daiches’s career and significance.