Adam Bede

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts University of Kent at Canterbury
　　'Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your immediate feelings...'
　　Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the eighteenth century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in 'the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis'. But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost. The movement of the narration between social realism and reflection on its own processes, the exploration of motives, and the constant authorial presence all bespeak an art that strives to connect the fictional with the actual.

Leonee Ormond is Reader in English at King's College, University of London. She has published books on George du Maurier, Lord Leighton (with Richard Ormond) and J. M. Barrie. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Book Description
This novel goes deep into the dark recesses of human nature and sets forth a philosophy of conduct and inexorable retribution for wrongdoing. Set in the countryside of the English Midlands at the start of the 19th century it relates a story of seduction, crime, remorse and suffering.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel written by George Eliot, published in three volumes in 1859. The title character, a carpenter, is in love with a woman who bears a child by another man. Although Bede tries to help her, he eventually loses her but finds happiness with Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher. Adam Bede was Eliot's first long novel. Its masterly realism--evident, for example, in the recording of Derbyshire dialect--brought to English fiction the same truthful observation of minute detail that John Ruskin was commending in the Pre-Raphaelites. But what was new in this work of English fiction was the combination of deep human sympathy and rigorous moral judgment.

Book Dimension :
length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6