Middlemarch is a monumental novel, and as much a delight to read today as it has ever been. George Eliot's immortal creations, the saintly and beautiful Dorothea Brooke, the dry-as-dust Edward Casaubon and the anguished progressive Tertius Lydgate, shine forth as some of the most exquisitely drawn characters in all of English literature. Eliot was at first criticised for the 'inartistic' realism of her story, which she subtitled 'A Study of Provincial Life' as if to claim it as a scholarly contribution to the new science of sociology. But what she had really written was an eternal masterpiece of candid observation, emotional insight and transcending humour.