Adam Bede

The seemingly peaceful rural village in the English Midlands at the turn of the eighteenth century is the setting for George Eliot's moving novel of three unworldly people trapped by unwise love. Adam Bede, a simple carpenter, loves too blindly; Hetty Sorrel, a coquettish beauty, too recklessly; Arthur Donnithorne, a dashing squire, too carelessly. Their innocence, vanity and imprudence, their foolish hearts lead them to a tragic triangle of seduction, murder and retribution. With emotional sincerity and intellectual integrity, George Eliot probes deeply into the psychology of commonplace people caught in the act of uncommon heroics. In Adam Bede, Eliot takes the well-known tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire, and out if it creates a wonderfully innovative, lively and sympathetic portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people--their labours and loves, their beliefs and their mind-set. Alexandre Dumas called this novel "the masterpiece of the century."