George Eliot’s Middlemarch and I have had a difficult relationship. Forty-five years ago, having just passed my entrance exam, I went up to Cambridge in the snow-engulfed Winter of Discontent to talk to my director of studies about what I should read before starting my undergraduate English degree: “Middlemarch,” he replied in an instant, in a tone that suggested I shouldn’t have had to ask. It was, he added, simply the finest novel in the English language.
Perilous Joy | The Point Magazine thepointmag.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thepointmag.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As a book that she could read over and over again, Middlemarch by George Eliot would be Philippa Gregory s desert island pick, not least for its complex women characters.