Middlemarch

Set in a provincial English town around 1830, Middlemarch weaves together the lives of many residents. Dorothea Brooke, an earnest young woman who longs to do good in the world, makes a doubtful marriage. Tertius Lydgate, an idealistic doctor, struggles with his reforming hopes and his own choices. Other families, courtships, money worries and political changes join their stories. Often called one of the finest English novels, it is a wise and humane study of ambition, marriage, work and the ordinary compromises of life.