Silas Marner (The Collector's Library of the World's Best-Loved Books)

225, [1] pp. 8vo. Full green leather, gilt titles and decorations, all edges gilt, three raised spine bands, decorative endpapers. Illustrations by William Hurd Lawrence. "Exiled by superstition and betrayal from Lantern Yard, and cut off from faith and human love, for fifteen years the solitary simple-hearted weaver Silas Marner has plied his loom in Raveloe and devoted himself to the amassing of a hoard of golden guineas. Silas's chance of redemption, when it appears one New Year's Eve, is intimately connected with the fate of Godfrey Cass, son of the village Squire. Clandestinely married, then blackmailed by his dissolute brother Dunstan, Godfrey like Silas has been trapped by his past, from which he is seeking to escape. Humorous, richly symbolic, subtly characterized and meticulously plotted, George Eliot's 'sudden inspiration' in this slim novel of rural England cut across her plans for Romola, her vast Italian Renaissance epic." ABOUT THE AUTHOR: "Mary Anne (Mary Ann, Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological insight. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes."