Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (Oxford World's Classics Hardcovers)

This review does not concentrate on George Eliot's masterpiece, which you will choose to read or not. I say only the obvious: "Middlemarch" is a lengthy novel (in this edition, 924 pages), beautifully written, peopled with complicated characters that are attractive, eccentric, off-putting, or some combination thereof. Eliot was an intelligent novelist and a master of form.

This review focuses on the series of which it is a member: Oxford World Classics, published in the late twentieth century. Consider this an attractively jacketed, hardcover, well-bound Penguin: 4.5" x 6.5" x 1.5", easily portable in purse or briefcase. If you like to read classics as classics, not as Kindles, this should appeal. This edition (1999) is introduced, briefly and insightfully, by A. S. Byatt, whose "Possession" (1990) won the Booker Prize. Byatt wisely makes no attempt to summarize the volume. Instead, she introduces us to Eliot, the world in which she lived, her masterwork's initial reception, and noteworthy elements of Eliot's style.

A downside to this volume is the size of its type. In order to compress so large a book into convenient, small dimensions, the point-size of Oxford's attractive font is about 9 or 10. Older readers, like myself, will need reading glasses. Perhaps Eliot herself used such to write her novel. Another downside may be availability: I have the impression that the six or seven classic novels in this series did not stay in print very long. In any event I found some handsome copies from Amazon vendor awesomebooksusa, which securely packaged and delivered multiple volumes in the series—this, "Madame Bovary," and "Wuthering Heights"—in timely fashion. If you want a collection of well-manufactured classics, mostly in English literature, in convenient size and reasonable price, this series comes highly recommended.