‘People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbours’. Rejecting the conventional narratives of the time, Middlemarch shows a realistic portrayal of Victorian village life. Peopling this ground-breaking work are Tertius Lydgate, a talented yet naive young doctor; Dorothea Brooke, stuck in a loveless marriage; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding shocking crimes from his past. An intricate story weaving together many lives, Middlemarch is described as one of the best-loved novels of all time and heralded as ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’ by Virginia Woolf. It is a richly nuanced drama that is a quintessential English classic.