Издания и произведения

'the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him'

George Eliot's first published work consisted of three short novellas: 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', 'Mr Gilfil's Love-Story', and 'Janet's Repentance'. Their depiction of the lives of ordinary men and women in a provincial Midlands town initiated a new era of nineteenth-century literary realism. The tales concern rural members of the clergy and the gossip and factions that a small town generates around them. Amos Barton only realizes how much he depends upon his wife's selfless love when she dies prematurely; Mr Gilfil's devotion to a girl who loves another is only fleetingly rewarded; and Janet Dempster suffers years of domestic abuse before the influence of an Evangelical minister turns her life around.

These stories are remarkable for the tenderness with which Eliot portrays a bygone time of religious belief in a newly secular age, giving literary fiction an alternative language to religion and philosophy for the observation and understanding of human experience.

When Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot's first novel, was published anonymously in 1857, it was immediately recognized, in the words of Saturday Review, as `the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer'. The three stories that make up the Scenes, `The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', `Mr Gilfil's Love Story', and `Janet's Repentance', intriguingly foreshadow George Eliot's later work. The first readers, including Dickens and Thackeray, were struck by the humorous irony, the truthfulness of the presentation of the lives of ordinary people, and the compassionate acceptance of human weakness which characterize Eliot's…

When Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot's first novel, was published anonymously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857, it was immediately recognized, in the words of Saturday Review, as `the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer'. The first readers, including Dickens and Thackeray, were struck by its humorous irony, the truthfulness of its presentation of the lives of ordinary men and women, and its compassionate acceptance of human weakness. The three stories that make up the Scenes, `The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', `Mr Gilfil's Love Story', and `Janet's Repentance', foreshadow George Eliot's major work,…

Who was the Countess and why does she selfishly ingratiate herself into the poor household of Reverend Amos Barton, curate of Shepperton? The effect on his wife and family, and the responses of his congregation are shown in this, the first of George Eliot's works of fiction, and one of three short stories, which comprise Scenes of Clerical Life. The Reverend Maynard Gilfil, humble chaplain at Cheverel Manor, was quietly in love with Caterina, a young beauty of Italian extraction living at the manor. But she loved the heir to the estate, Captain Wybrow. Why does she prowl round the grounds at night with a dagger in her pocket? All is…