Middlemarch: A Norton Critical Edition

“Chatterjee’s Middlemarch will be a godsend for the classroom. This richly supplemented edition makes it clear why it’s worth committing to this long novel as Chatterjee brings to the fore the resources for ethical living that Eliot continues to offer us.”

—Deidre Shauna Lynch, Harvard University

“With its extensive supplementary materials and cutting-edge secondary criticism, this new edition offers contemporary readers the ideal framework for understanding Eliot and her milieu, appreciating the complexities of Middlemarch, and gaining access to an incredible range of readings from Eliot’s time to our own that enrich our experience of the novel. Professor Chatterjee’s editorial chops and comprehensive annotations make this a must-read for first-time readers of the novel, as well as those returning to it, as we continue to grapple today with many of the same questions that animate Eliot’s Middlemarch.”

—Carolyn Lesjak, Simon Fraser University

“Ronjaunee Chatterjee sets the standard for teaching and researching George Eliot’s Middlemarch in her new, surely definitive edition. Chatterjee not only preempts queries from the curious reader who might be unfamiliar with the nuanced stratifications of Victorian clergy with her helpful glosses, but she also invites us to consider just how noninsular ‘a study of provincial life’ proves to be; Chatterjee compels us to expand our readerly lenses and discern Middlemarch’s cosmopolitan and colonial entanglements. Like the narrator, readers will still find themselves left with ‘much to do in unraveling certain human lots.’ But with the Norton Critical Edition, they will also find the support to unpack Middlemarch’s ‘particular webs’ in their unique localities. Too, Chatterjee supplies readers with inducement to explore the ‘tempting range of relevancies called the universe’ that constitute the novel’s historical contexts and its contemporary exigencies.”

—Lorenzo Servitje, Lehigh University