Why did she stand before me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous eyes fixed on me, and the glittering serpent, like a familiar demon, on her breast? In this dark novella of Victorian horror, George Eliot explores clairvoyance, fate and the possibility of life after death. It is one of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries — including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

In Middlemarch, in the heart of England, Dorothea wants to change the world and Dr Lydgate hopes to make great scientific discoveries. But after disastrous marriages, they both lose control of their lives. Can they ever achieve their dreams? Middlemarch is generally considered to be one of the greatest novels in the English language.

She had believed that my wild poet's passion for her would make me her slave; and that, being her slave, I should execute her will in all things. The Lifted Veil was first published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1859. A dark fantasy woven from contemporary scientific interest in the physiology of the brain, mesmerism, phrenology and experiments in revification it is Eliot's anatomy of her own moral philsophy — the ideal of imaginative sympathy or the ability to see into others' minds and emotions. Narrated by an egoccentric, morbid young clairvoyant man whose fascination for Bertha Grant lies partly in her obliquity, the story also explores fiction's ability to offer insight into the self, as well as being a remarkable portrait of a misdeveloped artist whose visionary powers merely blight his life. The Lifted Veil is now one of the most widely read and critically discussed of Eliot's works. Published as a companion piece to The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob is by contrast Eliot's literary homage to Thackeray, a satirical modern fable that draws telling parallels between eating and reading.Yet both stories reveal Eliot's deep engagement with the question of whether there are 'necessary truths' independent of our perception of them and the boundaries of art and the self. Helen Small's introduction casts new light on works which fully deserve to be read alongside Eliot's novels.

Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate, and that of the little girl he adopts, is entwined with Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire, who, like Silas, is trapped by his past. Silas Marner, George Eliot's favourite of her novels, combines humour, rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life.

When Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot's first novel, was published anonymously in 1857, it was immediately recognized, in the words of Saturday Review, as the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer. The three stories that make up the Scenes, The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton, Mr Gilfil's Love Story, and Janet's Repentance, intriguingly foreshadow George Eliot's later work. The first readers, including Dickens and Thackeray, were struck by the humorous irony, the truthfulness of the presentation of the lives of ordinary people, and the compassionate acceptance of human weakness which characterize Eliot's writing.

Felix Holt, austere, idealistic, and passionate, is pitted against the self-satisfied local landlord Harold Transome in this story set in a Midland borough at the time of the Great Reform Bill of 1832. Every class of society is included in Eliot's vivid picture of political ferment.

In Adam Bede (1859) George Eliot took the well-worn tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire, and out of it created a wonderfully innovative and sympathetic portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people — their labours and loves, their beliefs, their talk. Hugely popular in its own time, Adam Bede is one of the greatest examples of humane and liberal Victorian social concern, a pioneering classic of radical social realism. It is also important for the way it meditates on the need for such fiction and the methods of writing it. As the Introduction declares: The distinction of Adam Bede is to tell a story, and also to tell about telling a story. This is a novel about obscure lives, and also about how to be a novel about obscure lives. This edition reprints the original broadsheet reports of the murder case that was a starting point for the book, and the notes illuminate Eliot's many literary and religious references.

Daniel Deronda opens with one of the most memorable encounters in fiction: Gwendolen Harleth, alluring yet unsettling, is poised at the roulette-table in Leubronn, observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper classes, and now searching for his path in life. While Gwendolen becomes trapped in an oppressive marriage, a series of dramatic encounters draws Deronda into ever deeper sympathy with Jewish aspirations to cultural and natural identity. Remote as Gwendolen's country-house world may seem from the world of Mirah, the lost daughter, and Mordecai, the visionary, George Eliot weaves these strands of her plot intimately together, daring the readers of Adam Bede and Middlemarch to open their eyes to areas of experience wholly new to the Victorian novel.

This popular series of readers has now been completely revised and updated, using a new syllabus and new word structure lists. Readability has been ensured by means of specially designed computer software. Words that are above level but essential to the story are explained within the text, illustrated, and then reused for maximum reinforcement.

This popular series of readers has now been completely revised and updated, using a new syllabus and new word structure lists. Readability has been ensured by means of specially designed computer software. Words that are above level but essential to the story are explained within the text, ilustrated, and then reused for maximum reinforcement.

The Mill on the Floss, based on George Eliot's own experiences of provincial life, is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. As the headstrong Maggie Tulliver grows into womanhood, the deep love which she has for her brother Tom turns into conflict, because she cannot reconcile his bourgeois standards with her own lively intelligence. Maggie is unable to adapt to her community or break free from it, and the result, on more than one level, is tragedy.