These photos were one of the books of an incomplete set of George Eliot books I purchased.The lady in the hat feeding the dog is dated 1919 .That trio looks like they are ready to break out & take over .My mind says there‘s a short story or a novel in there somewhere.
pickThe characters are just as exasperating as those in Middlemarch, but I prefer the plot in Felix Holt, the Radical, because it is less about romance. Also, Felix‘s mother is hilarious—definitely my favourite Eliot character from the two books. The #audiobook edition narrated by Nadia May, a.k.a. Wanda McCaddon, is a pleasure. At almost 18 hours in length, it‘s long enough to feel totally immersed in the 1830s small-town England setting.
More cross-pollination between books I‘ve got on the go: George Eliot‘s Felix Holt echoes an underlying idea in Catherine Hernandez‘s Crosshairs.
“I hold it blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority. There‘s no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it in the beginning.” -Eliot
It lay in the probabilities of things that gentry‘s intellects should be peculiar, since they had not to get their own living; the good Lord might have economised in their case that common sense which others were so much more in need of.
Western women were not to his taste. They showed a transition from the feebly animal to the thinking being which was simply troublesome. Harold preferred a slow-witted, large-eyed woman, silent and affectionate, with a load of black hair weighing much more heavily than her brains.
“Well, to be sure, such great eyes and such a great head of hair—it‘s enough to frighten one. What can she see in him?”
After almost three years I can see my George Eliot, John Steinbeck, and Hermann Hesse collections. Hard to believe how many books I accumulated during the past three years.
Felix Holt, the Radical (Revised) | 
