Adam Bede

Published in 1859, Adam Bede was Eliot's first novel.  This remarkably accomplished debut established Eliot as a writer of the first rank.  In rural Hayslope, Adam Bede, a local carpenter, falls in love with the beautiful but vain Hetty Sorrell, who is herself in love with a caddish young squire who seduces her and casts her aside.

George Eliot (1819-1880), born Mary Ann Evans, was a pioneering woman novelist in the Victorian era. She wrote under a male pen name in order to be taken seriously as an author and maintain a private life. Known for her penetrating psychological insights, her first success was Adam Bede; her classic Middlemarch.