REBECCA MEAD: She is certainly highly esteemed among novelists-Zadie Smith has an excellent essay about her in her most recent collection. Is Eliot more esteemed among other novelists that some of the people she’s grouped with? QUESTION FROM MARTHA F.: I love that Virginia Woolf quote about Eliot writing for grown-ups. It took me until now to find a way to write about her. REBECCA MEAD: I’ve been thinking about Middlemarch and about George Eliot for most of my adult life, in one way or another. QUESTION FROM GLENN: Had you been planning to write about this for a long time? What made it the right time now? It’s a wonderful book, but I didn’t appreciate it when I read it in my teens. Why did they always do Silas Marner in High School when Mill certainly has more to say to youngsters? What is there about SL? QUESTION FROM AJ: Mill on the Floss was my first Eliot book and I have always loved it. REBECCA MEAD: Thank you! I’m relieved, in fact, that I first read Middlemarch when I was still young enough not even to have heard of literary theory. QUESTION FROM WENDY: Do you hope your own son will find solace and advice and happiness in “Middlemarch”? I haven’t done a thorough search of her books for it, but I feel GE was the author least likely to be worried about wrinkles I can think of. Incidentally this week I came across another quote she allegedly said which seems even more implausible to me: “wear a smile and have friends, wear a frown and have wrinkles,” or words to that close effect. REBECCA MEAD: So agree, though I do find when I am reading her that there are lines I underline all the time. I was just telling a friend that GE is the least ‘quotable’ author I know of.and that’s not a bad thing. I think it is significant that no one could find the source of the ‘never too late’ quote.

QUESTION FROM DAVID: I really enjoyed your article.

And I even like the “Jewish” parts-the bits that one critic-I think it was FR Leavis-thought should have been excised!

The relationship between Grandcourt and Gwendolyn makes my blood run cold. REBECCA MEAD: I adore Daniel Deronda! It’s a magnificent novel. QUESTION FROM FL: What do you think of “Daniel Deronda”? What I love about George Eliot is that she has no easy answers-because there are none. Though there’s nowhere better to go than a good novel to learn about what matters in life. REBECCA MEAD: I think it’s very unfashionable among scholars, at least, to think of novels in what might seem a simplistic way.

Author middlemarch