George Eliot

Gillian Beer, the critic behind Darwin's Plots, turns here to George Eliot as a woman writer, asking how Eliot's own position shaped the novels and how they engage with questions about women and their place in the world. Written for the Key Women Writers series, it reads Eliot's fiction alongside the history and ideas of her time, giving weight to the moral seriousness that runs through her work.

A thoughtful companion for anyone who has finished Middlemarch or The Mill on the Floss and wants to go back with sharper eyes.