:INFO The Victorian Novel That Reads Like a Contemporary Psychological Study Middlemarch was published in 1871 and contains more psychological precision about human motivation than most novels published in the last decade. George Eliot understood how people deceive themselves, how institutions resist the people inside them, and how idealism meets reality in a way that is neither triumphant nor simply crushing. Dorothea Brooke is one of the most fully realized characters in all of English fiction and her novel is one of the most important. :COUNTER.half 880 Pages | :GOAL.half [target:7, current:1] George Eliot novels finished :QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:George Eliot] The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts. :JOURNEY Reading Middlemarch 5 Complete portrait 5 Equally devastating 3 Weakest strand 5 Essential close :GOAL [target:7, current:1] George Eliot novels finished :NOTE Do not read Middlemarch quickly. Eliot's sentences reward rereading within a page. One chapter a day is the correct pace for the first read and the experience is better for it.