My Life in Middlemarch is a difficult book to categorize and an unusual effort. It is part memoir, part literary criticism, part literary history and biography, part thoughtful examination. Its focus is on George Eliot’s greatest novel, Middlemarch.
New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead muses about what the novel, her favorite as it is mine, has meant to her during different periods of her life, how different parts of the novel and different characters have spoken to her and how her sympathies with characters and comprehension of the novel’s themes have changed as her life was in its varying stages. She also examines events in Eliot’s own life—how they and the people she knew may have contributed to her works.
This book is about all things Middlemarch. Mead visits the towns and homes where Eliot resided and places where she may have set the novel. She reports on the ways that literary criticism of the novel changed over time—how it was immediately popular and then fell out of favor in later years to be rehabilitated, partially by the appreciation of Virginia Woolf. The book provides interesting insights into the novel and into Eliot’s life and possible thought processes as she wrote the novel.
For those who have not read Middlemarch, the book still may hold some interest, but a lot will be lost. To those who have read and loved it, you will probably, like me, be compelled to pick it up again and reread it. I’ll be doing that soon.
whatmeread 
I have thought that the premise of this book sounds interesting, but I confess to not having ever read Middlemarch. So, Middlemarch comes first, I think.
I agree. Although she relates parts of the plot and explains other things about the book, you’re probably not going to get as much out of it without reading Middlemarch.
I’ve heard only good things about this book — glad you’re on board too! What makes Middlemarch your favorite book?
Hmm, I don’t know. It’s very rich in characters and ideas. I am not at all like Dorothea, but I sympathize with her so much, how her blind idealism gets her into this horrible marriage, how she thinks her husband is going to be her mentor and they are going to have a partnership. And I also like intelligent, sensible Mary a lot. I like how she even shows that the characters who seem like villains are human, too.
All great reasons!
Middlemarch is on my to-read list but I am thinking now that I should push it up. I’ve also heard only amazing things about it. I’d love to read that and then Mead’s book afterwards.
It’s a hefty read, but I think it’s really good. Definitely do it in that order.
Yes, the length is what’s been intimidating me…but it sounds like it is totally worth it.
I have Middlemarch on my Classics Club TBR but I’ve also started this one — the author assured me one can ‘get’ it having not read Middlemarch. So far, the first few chapters have resonated, mostly because I get being a geeky, bookish girl — I wonder if I’ll stop ‘getting’ it as I go on?
It’s hard for me to tell. I was okay with it even though I hadn’t read Middlemarch for several years. So, maybe it’ll go okay. She explains the things she needs to, but I just think it would mean more to someone who had already read it.