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First edition of the author's magnum opus. Virginia Woolf famously hailed the work as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"; in an interview with The Guardian, Martin Amis designated it "the novel of the 19th century. I would say that it is the central English novel". The draft for the work was projected to outgrow the Victorian three-decker format, causing Eliot's partner, G. H. Lewes, to suggest to the publisher that they follow the model of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (1862) and serialize Middlemarch in eight half-volume parts, followed by book publication in four volumes. This new experiment in British publishing ran from December 1871 to December 1872, resulting in what is now regarded as one of the greatest novels of the English language. According to V. S. Pritchett, in his introduction to a later edition of the novel, "no Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative.... No writer has ever represented the ambiguities of moral choice so fully". The full stop in "VOL. I" on the title page is present in this copy, the absence of which Baker & Ross note is a defective impression, rather than a different state. The text on page 103 of the second volume is the uncorrected reading ("viros nulli" rather than the correct "viros nullo"). Baker & Ross associate the correction with the four-volume issue that followed the first eight half-volume First edition of the author's magnum opus. Virginia Woolf famously hailed the work as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"; in an interview with The Guardian, Martin Amis designated it "the novel of the 19th century. I would say that it is the central English novel". The draft for the work was projected to outgrow the Victorian three-decker format, causing Eliot's partner, G. H. Lewes, to suggest to the publisher that they follow the model of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (1862) and serialize Middlemarch in eight half-volume parts, followed by book publication in four volumes. This new experiment in British publishing ran from December 1871 to December 1872, resulting in what is now regarded as one of the greatest novels of the English language. According to V. S. Pritchett, in his introduction to a later edition of the novel, "no Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative.... No writer has ever represented the ambiguities of moral choice so fully". The full stop in "VOL. I" on the title page is present in this copy, the absence of which Baker & Ross note is a defective impression, rather than a different state. The text on page 103 of the second volume is the uncorrected reading ("viros nulli" rather than the correct "viros nullo"). Baker & Ross associate the correction with the four-volume issue that followed the first eight half-volume parts: the presence of this error may therefore indicate that this copy is a particularly early printing of the four-volume issue. The line "The Right of Translation is Reserved" at the foot of each volume title page, often trimmed, is present. Half-titles are absent throughout. READ MORE Four vols, octavo (171 x 111 mm). Near-contemporary red half morocco, raised bands, gilt decorations, and lettering to spines, marbled sides, endpapers, and edges. Ink stamps of Mudie's Select Library on front free endpapers verso. Mudie's was the biggest circulating library in Victorian Britain. Spines slightly darkened and rolled, some minor rubbing to extremities, a little light foxing to outer leaves: very good condition. Baker & Ross A10.1.a; Parrish, pp. 32-33; Wolff 2059.

First published in 1871-72, 'Middlemarch' is a comprehensive novel covering the socio-political landscape of a fictional Midlands town in early 19th century England.