Rebecca Mead

Our group at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum did a slow read together of George Eliot's Middlemarch this past year. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as we made our way through and discussed Dorothea, Lydgate, Causaubon, Mary, Rosamunde, and their lives. We touched on so many themes--marriage, money, progress, religion, etc. Find a group read like this and I guarantee the book will stay with you.

What a delight, then, to pick up My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. Mead weaves Eliot's biography, and her correspondence along with major themes in Middlemarch and other works. Mead travels to the locations important to Eliot and then draws in a number of the same themes we discussed. This book was made all the richer having done the slow read. How for instance Eliot turned the standard novel on its head by starting the novel with a marriage instead of ending it ala Austen. She addresses Woolf's famous assessment that it is "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."

I especially enjoyed the glimpses into Eliot's domestic relationship with George Lewes and his children and how the people around her may have served as inspiration for various characters. Mead also touches on Eliot's writing process and obstacles (migraines, toothaches, and family illnesses). But also how Lewes and Eliot had what looks like a modern happy working relationship. Like Eliot, I found a true partner late in life and I certainly could relate to Mead's line, "To find a partner as accepting and generous as Lewes is a great and unexpected gift."

On the whole, I found this book enriched my Middlemarch experience, and as I am now working my way back through all of Eliot's works.… (mere)

It’s been over 25 years since I read Middlemarch for Victorian Lit in college, and I vaguely remember enjoying it (way more than Heart of Darkness which we also read, and I loathed) but not really any details; I much more remember where I read most of it which was in Charlotte while visiting my grandparents.

Mead’s love for the novel has me wanting to return to it, and I think I’ll be checking out the audiobook soon and prepping myself for thirty plus hours of listening. I loved learning more about George Eliot and her fairly untraditional but happy life; the mix of sources here was fascinating, and the author did a wonderful job with the tidbits she shared. My vivid memory of Victorian Lit was learning and truly understanding the word “earnest”, and it sounds as though Eliot was the epitome of earnestness.

As usual I love these reads which mingle memoir and biography, and having this also be a book about books (as she referred to other Eliot writings as well) truly made it perfect for me.… (mere)

I can see this is a marvellous, learned journey into a writer's love for the book, Middlemarch. I hope I have the patience to finish the audiobook.

Unlike the first commentator below, it's a long time since I read Middlemarch - and I remember that I was awed by it. Then many years later, but still a long time ago, I read a biography of Mary Ann Evans, and that was like stepping into a parallel Middlemarch universe. It was intensely interesting, perhaps in the sense of being a voyeur on a private person's life. One part I recall was how affected she was by knowing herself to be plain - hell! Could such a woman be plain?!… (mere)