A Season in Middlemarch

Juliana over at the [blank] garden recently announced a readalong for George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and I’ve decided to join in! Eliot and I have a complicated relationship. While I enjoyed The Mill on the Floss in high school and Romola this past semester, I struggled to get through Silas Marner and ultimately gave up on both Middlemarch and Adam Bede. But since Eliot is one of the top Victorian women writers and I’m getting a PhD in literature with a focus on Victorian women writers, I can’t exactly get away from her. Middlemarch is probably the most important novel I need to read for my qualifying exam next year. Reading it with a set schedule will be helpful.

I am starting a week later than the posted schedule. I’m not sure if I’m going to just finish a week later or try to play catch up. We’ll see how I’m feeling. I will also be fully annotating the novel so I have notes to look back on. Usually I don’t annotate, so this is going to be a fun experiment.

The event schedule goes Monday to Monday, so I will post a weekly update on Sundays with my thoughts on the section, some favorite quotes, and maybe some of my notable annotations. I’m also on the lookout for a new copy because I hate this one. The cover is ugly and the print is tiny. But it was free. 🤷‍♀️ I’d much prefer either the Oxford Classics or Penguin Classics editions. I’m planning a book shopping trip for tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get lucky!