A panoramic study of provincial English life centered on idealistic Dorothea Brooke and ambitious young doctor Tertius Lydgate as their aspirations collide with a narrow society.
Books mentioned in Middlemarch (11)
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: “I have bought one of his works myself--a very nice thing, a very superior publication, entitled 'Ivanhoe.”
Waverley by Walter Scott: “Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him.”
Anne of Geierstein by Walter Scott: “Anne of Geierstein' (pronounced Jeersteen) or the 'Maiden of the Mist, by the author of Waverley.”
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson: “He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it.”
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: “deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do”
Lalla Rookh by Thomas Moore: “She found time also to read the best novels, and even the second best, and she knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite poem was "Lalla Rookh."”
Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea by Charles Johnstone: “All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea," which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.”
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan: “She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a pink-and-white nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence in the "Pilgrim's Progress."”
An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope: “Minchin for his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man."”
The Christian Year by John Keble: “Casaubon, to her old companion Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year."”
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith: “I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of Wakefield and Mr.”
Books that mention Middlemarch (9)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: “That evening he unpacked his books from London… and a novel called "Middlemarch," as to which there had lately been interesting things said in the reviews.”
Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt: “Same reading-list sentence: 'Madame Bovary, The Idiot, Middlemarch, The Castle, Anna Karenina, I think Mansfield Park, perhaps La Nausée.'”
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield: “"The Woman in White." "Middlemarch," I supplied.”
How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom: “George Eliot was one of the finest of novelists, and Middlemarch (her masterpiece) abounds in fascinating moral judgments.”
The Every by Dave Eggers: “Would you like to continue reading Middlemarch?”
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: “Adam Bede was not as exciting or developed as Middlemarch”
Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver: “With Middlemarch and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the world, a person should squander her reading time on fashionably ironic books about nothing much?”
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney: “I went back out to the waiting room and saw my mother reading my copy of Middlemarch.”
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee: “reread Middlemarch or began another volume of Trollope borrowed”