George Eliot
Daniel Deronda meets the beautiful, extravagant Gwendolen in Germany and witnesses her great gambling losses which contribute to her family's bankruptcy. He then intervenes when she means to pawn her necklace, and the story splits, to narrate their two separate histories.
Eliot's only novel set in her contemporary Victorian society, Daniel Deronda was a controversial work of moral and social questioning, which explored Jewish Zionism and
...2) Middlemarch
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is exactly what it claims. Its multiple plots center around the inhabitants of a fictitious Midlands town and their evolving relationships to each other. It is critical of social class, ambition and marriage, and religion. It is commonly considered one of the masterpieces of English writing, and Virginia Woolf described it as "the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few
...Silas Marner is accused of stealing funds from his small Christian congregation. Presumed guilty by his community and rejected by the woman he loves, Silas leaves and lives as a recluse near Raveloe village. He takes refuge only in working and attaining wealth, until his precious gold is stolen from him. But a child, her mother found dead in the snow, is thrust into his life, changing it completely. Ultimately, Silas Marner is a redeeming
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