Adam Bede

A carpenter who loves too faithfully. A woman who loves the wrong man. And a fall from grace that cannot be undone.

George Eliot's first novel announced a major new voice in English literature, a story of rural life, moral failure, and the slow, painful work of forgiveness.

Adam Bede, a young carpenter of immense strength and integrity, loves the beautiful, vain Hetty Sorrel. She is a dairy maid who dreams of finer things. She does not love Adam. She is seduced by Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire of the estate, who is charming, selfish, and careless with hearts. When Hetty discovers she is pregnant, Arthur is gone. Desperate and terrified, she abandons her baby in the woods and is arrested for infanticide. Adam, broken-hearted, watches her trial. Only the village preacher, Dinah Morris—a Methodist woman of quiet power—can reach Hetty in her cell. The novel moves from the warmth of the carpenter's workshop to the cold of the prison cell, and finally to a kind of grace.

This is Eliot at her most compassionate and realistic: a novel about the consequences of small sins, the dignity of working people, and the possibility of redemption after ruin. Adam Bede was a sensation when it was published—and it remains one of Eliot's most powerful works.

• George Eliot's first novel, published in 1859 to enormous success

• Based on a true story told to Eliot by her aunt, a Methodist preacher

• Explores themes of class, morality, forgiveness, and the interior lives of working people

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A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears—or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the strongest hands are the ones that hold steady after everything breaks.

About the Author

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), one of the leading novelists of the Victorian era. Born in Warwickshire, she was the daughter of a mill manager. She was deeply religious as a young woman but later rejected her faith, translating controversial works of biblical criticism. She moved to London, became the assistant editor of The Westminster Review, and entered into a scandalous unmarried partnership with the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes, who encouraged her to write fiction. Adam Bede was her first novel, published when she was nearly forty. It was an immediate success, but its authorship was initially a mystery; many guessed it was written by a clergyman because of its moral seriousness. When Eliot revealed herself as the author, the public was fascinated and scandalized. Her other major works include The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda(1876). She died in 1880, just months after marrying John Walter Cross, a man twenty years her junior. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.