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Welcome to r/ayearofmiddlemarch, where we challenge ourselves to spend a year reading George Eliot's Middlemarch! 2021 will mark our second year as a sub - I participated as a first-time reader last year and now I'm thrilled to continue on as moderator and facilitator of our weekly Saturday discussions. Our other moderator is /u/fixtheblue !
This post has our rules (which can also be found on the sidebar), as well as some FAQs about Middlemarch and our sub. At the bottom, there will be a masterlist of our weekly discussion threads, which I will try to remember to update each week.
Rules
Our rules are pretty basic.
- Abide by Reddit rules - this goes without saying.
- Maintain decorum - please treat all members of the subreddit with respect and civility.
- Be mindful of spoilers - if you've read the book before or choose to read ahead of the schedule, please do not spoil others. On the weekly discussion threads, please only comment on the chapters being discussed and anything before those chapters. If you want to make a post that contains spoilers for future chapters (anything ahead of the schedule), please flair the post accordingly.
FAQs
Why Middlemarch?
Middlemarch is a novel originally published in eight volumes between 1871 and 1872. It is widely considered to be George Eliot's masterpiece. The novel is an early example of historical fiction; Eliot set it about 40 years in the past, between 1829-1832. It chronicles several families in a small English country town in the years leading up to the passage of the 1832 Reform Act, which drastically transformed the electoral system in England by giving the right to vote to small landowners, merchants, and other men who had previously not been considered wealthy enough to vote. It also gave several larger cities separate Parliamentary boroughs for the first time, representing a major shift in the balance of power between rural and urban areas economically and politically.
Middlemarch deals with everything from politics to religion to art to the role of women in the household and society. Eliot is particularly renowned for her nuanced and sympathetic portrayals of three-dimensional characters, incisive commentary on political and class issues, and compelling descriptions of her characters' psychological state and motivations.
The novel is also considered important because Eliot, a female writer who led a scandalous public life, meditates on "the woman question" in Victorian society. The plot revolves around two women, Dorothea and Rosamund, who often make very different choices but face parallel struggles because of the restrictions of living as a woman in a patriarchal society.
The book is certainly not for everyone, as it is over 800 pages and can be meandering in some places. But Eliot has a gift for chronicling the lives of ordinary people. She has a particular penchant for describing the same event from multiple points of view, making the reader sympathize with or at least understand almost every character, even antagonists. And her prose is often elegant and sometimes stunning.
If you're looking for a classic that examines both the macro (national and regional politics) and the micro (the domestic struggles and joys of a single family), a master class in writing characters, and the fascinating perspective of a woman reflecting on a still-recent period in her country's history, Middlemarch might be for you!
Why read it over a year?
Middlemarch is infamously intimidating for a few reasons: its length, the density of its prose, and its litany of obscure allusions, often including snippets in other languages that Eliot chose to leave untranslated. Spacing the book out over a year makes it a much more manageable and, in my opinion, enjoyable experience.
Also, the book was originally published in eight installments released over the course of two years. In some ways, our method is closer to how people would have been reading and enjoying the book at the time of its release. No one was reading all 800 pages at once, at least not at first!
Finally, the "year of" reading challenge is a beloved reading method on Reddit. There are several other subs that do the same thing, check out r/ayearofbookhub to see the full family tree!
Reading the book slowly and coming together to discuss it each week provides a unique reading experience. We are able to form a supportive, engaging, and fun community. It's like an online book club, and you usually end up recognizing the same few usernames posting week after week. You also get to see other people's experience reading the book: sometimes you'll find that most people agree with your take on the most recent chapter, but sometimes someone will point something out that you'd never noticed before, and you can dive into the next chapter with a set of fresh eyes, questions, and ideas.
Which edition of the book should I get?
There's a guide to different editions on this blog about Middlemarch, written by an English professor specializing in the Victorian period. I recommend getting an edition with at least some footnotes if possible, which will make it a bit easier to untangle some of the more obscure allusions.
I will personally be reading the Oxford World's Classics edition. I will try to include any relevant context I glean from the footnotes in the weekly discussion threads, for those of you with other editions.
Where can I find a free ebook or audiobook of the book?
There is a free ebook on Project Gutenberg, and a free audiobook on Librivox.
What is the 2021 schedule?
The 2021 schedule can be found here. Weekly discussion threads will be posted on Saturdays.
Because there are not enough chapters for the reading to be spread out evenly over a full year, there are several week-long breaks scheduled throughout the year. Most of these are scheduled for when we finish each volume of the book. If there's enough interest, I may decide to post discussion threads those weeks when we can discuss the volume we just finished as a whole.
Masterlist of discussion threads
Subreddit
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