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Review
`Review from previous edition 'Carol Martin demonstrates that the first edition will not do and persuasively makes the case for taking as copy-text the corrected 'eighth edition' of 1861...the notes are the best available'' Stephen Gill, The George Eliot Review, No. 33, 2002 [n.b. Gill is editor of the Penguin edition, which uses the first edition text]
Book Description
'Our deeds carry their terrible consequences...consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.' Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in their small rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot'snative Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of the interaction of ordinary people brought a new social realism to the novel, in which humour and tragedy co-exist, and fellow-feeling is the mainstay of human relationships. Faith, in the figure of Methodist preacher Dinah Morris, offers redemption to all who are willing to embrace it. This new edition is based on the definitive Clarendon edition and Eliot's corrected text of1861.
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WITH a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer* undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
WITH a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer* undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
5.0 out of 5 stars
An old favorite, Dec 9 2011
By Demeron - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Adam Bede (Paperback)
Adam Bede, like Bleak House, Middlemarch, and yes, David Copperfield, is one of the books that sits on my nightstand for years. To me it's like reviewing homemade bread-- you either like it or you don't. Bring on Adam Bede, a cup of tea and a pot of jam, please.
7 of 11 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
James Was Right, Sep 4 2010
By Joseph Barbarie - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Adam Bede (Paperback)
"Adam Bede", Eliot's first novel, reminds me of something Rossini once said of Wagner's music: "Lovely moments followed by awful quarters-of-an-hour." Indeed, the awful bits of this work drag on for much longer than quarters of an hour, for even Wagner's longest opera ("Gotterdammerung" can clock in at a hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing five or six hours) doesn't demand quite so much of a time investment of its audience.Henry James's 1866 criticisms of the work (which even include proposed alternate resolutions for the various characters) are spot-on. In the first place, James takes Eliot's work to task for the highly intrusive narrator, constantly inserting himself (herself?) and offering all sorts of nudges and helpful guides to reader sympathy. James's objection to this sort of thing should come as no surprise, insofar as James himself was the master of non-intrusive narration (and was even not above a bit of misleading of his readers for artistic purposes). As for his suggested plot revisions, particularly that one about the novel's hopelessly Pollyanna-ish linking up of Adam and Dinah, are spot-on. He also correctly points out that Adam's misery at Hetty's end is not a good enough reason to engage our own sympathy.
Furthermore, James's assessment of the character of Hetty, for which he praises Eliot, is correct. Most of the dramatic tension of the novel is supplied by the contrast between Hetty's fantasy-life of carriages and ball-gowns, and the quiet farm life of Hall Farm (which she despises). Some of the novel's other finer moments have to do with the young squire Donnithorne, who finds his own fantasies crushed (but rather more by his own doing).
As for the titular character, at every page I kept waiting for the "other foot to drop," as it were, for Eliot to pull back the stolid curtain of Adam's wholesomeness (as James would have, for instance). The moment never came, and for this reason, Adam remains but "half made-up" (as Shakespeare put in), only unlike Richard III, there is no "deformity" for us descant upon. For this reason, his lovelife remains weirdly static and unconvincing, and unlike that of any male ever to walk this earth. By contrast, Donnithorne's on-again, off-again pursuit of Hetty, with all of its nervous, guilty sexuality, is far more true to life, and absorbing as a result.
In sum, this book suffers from a bad case of bloat, as though Eliot were being paid by the word, particularly in those additional chapters following Hetty's imprisonment. Frankly, the last fifteen chapters of this novel were a pretty hard slog.
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