About this item
"Silas Marner and Two Short Stories, " by George Eliot, is part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics"""series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of "Barnes & Noble Classics" New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. "Barnes & Noble Classics "pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. George Eliot s third novel, "Silas Marner" (1861) is a powerful and moving tale about one man s journey from exile and loneliness to the warmth and joy of the family. The story opens as Silas Marner, falsely accused of theft, loses everything, including his faith in God. Embittered and alienated from his fellow man, he moves to the village of Raveloe, where he becomes a weaver. Taking refuge in his work, Silas slowly begins to accumulate goldhis only joy in lifeuntil one day that too is stolen from him. Then one dark evening, a beautiful, golden-haired child, lost and seeing the light from Silas s cottage, toddles in through his doorway. As Silas grows to love the girl as if she were his own daughter, his life changes into something precious. But his happiness is threatened when the orphan s real father comes to claim the girl as his own, and Silas must face losing a treasure greater than all the gold in the world. This volume also includes two shorter works by Eliot"The Lifted Veil, " a dark Gothic fantasy about a morbid young clairvoyant, and "Brother Jacob, " a deliciously satirical fable about a confectioner s apprentice. George Levine is Kenneth Burke Professor of English Literature at Rutgers University, and director of the University s Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture. He has written extensively about Victorian literature and culture, and has for a long time focused attention on Darwin and the relations between science and literature, particularly in his "Darwin and the Novelists. " He has written and edited many books, on subjects ranging from Frankenstein to the works of Thomas Pynchon. Most recently, he has edited "The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot" and written a study of Victorian scientific thought and literature, "Dying to Know. ""
About the Author
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880; alternatively "Mary Anne" or "Marian") , known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859) , The Mill on the Floss (1860) , Silas Marner (1861) , Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) , Middlemarch (1871-72) , and Daniel Deronda (1876) , most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. She also wished to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.Her 1872 work Middlemarch has been described by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Swiss artist Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade (1804-86) [Public Domain], via English Wikipedia.
