Middlemarch - Initial Reception

The score(s) next to each publication’s review and the average rating is an interpretation of the reviews by Literature’s Pretty Long History.

Critics:

Volume I

4.2

4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 37 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

The Penn Monthly

December 1872

Full Review

“We rise from perusing the first installment of Middlemarch with the conviction that all her old power is here.”

Lippincott’s Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science

November 1872

Full Review

“This is one of those rare works in which we are gratified with a great many kinds of excellence in their highest several development.”

American Journal Of Education

November 1872

Full Review

“A single volume is not enough to justify criticism upon a novel as a work of art, but the evidences are that Middlemarch is in no respect inferior to these. Those who read the first volume will look impatiently for the second.”

Peterson’s Magazine

November 1872

Full Review

“In the present story, the first volume of which is before us, we recognize the same insight into character, the same profound sympathy with human nature, and the same artistic handling, which distinguished her earlier works, Perhaps she is not quite so exuberant and fresh; but to make up for this, she is more finished.”

Volume II

4.2

4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 17 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

The Christian Union

February 12, 1873

Full Review

“As a whole, it is the most quiet and uneventful of George Eliot’s stories, and perhaps it does not display all her powers so fully as did Adam Bede and Nomola; but it will not weaken the opinion of many critics that she is, now that Thackeray and Dickens are gone, the greatest of living English novelists.”

The Morning Bulletin

June 4, 1872

Full Review

“In this second instalment of Middlemarch we are still in the stage of introduction.”

Magnet

March 4, 1872

Full Review

“The second part of Middlemarch is serious reading.”

John Bull

March 2, 1872

Full Review

“Each individual, with his or her characteristic foibles, stands out distinct and entire—forcibly drawn in those clear-cut lines which makes George Elliot’s writings resemble the work of a master sculptor, where no weak or faltering touch appears.”

Volume III

4.3

4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 14 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

John Bull

November 23, 1872

Full Review

“That that design in its completeness will be worthy of George Eliot we may safely predict.”

Tablet

May 18, 1872

Full Review

“The interest of this cleverly written novel is in no way lessened but rather increases as we go on.”

Aberdeen Journal

May 1, 1872

Full Review

“THE second instalment of Middlemarch—full though it is as ever of its Autor’s royal genius, of clear-sighted wisdom, faithful delineation, and sharply-cut apothegm—is perhaps less interesting than the history of Miss Brooke, so movingly told in the first.”

The Standard

April 29, 1872

Full Review

“We have purposely not traced the narrative precisely, because that would be unfair to the author; but this much may be said, that, notwithstanding the faults we have indicated, “Middlemarch” is a work of surprising genius, and of characteristic interest in every chapter.”

Volume IV

4.1

4.1 out of 5 stars (based on 14 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

Magnet

July 22, 1872

Full Review

“In this part of George Eliot’s new story Dorothea is the central figure.”

Aberdeen Journal

June 19, 1872

Full Review

“We have read this part of “Middlemarch” with profound admiration, and can assure those who omit reading it that they are neglecting the most notable work of the time.”

Tablet

June 15, 1872

Full Review

“The last chapter in this fourth volume is devoted to to Mr. Casaubon and his peculiarities, and a very cleverly drawn picture of the self-creating susceptibility and morbid feelings of jealousy which had transformed his inner life into something very like a hell.”

Vanity Fair

June 15, 1872

“THE new number of “Middlemarch” opens with the reading of Mr. Featherstone’s will.”

Volume V

4.3

4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 11 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

John Bull

September 7, 1872

Full Review

“A powerful and clever book is “Middlemarch,” but the interest is diffused over too many persons, the canvas is too large and too crowded for the work to be considered its author’s masterpiece.”

Aberdeen Journal

August 21, 1872

Full Review

““Middlemarch” is a work of great power and genius, and an addition to our permanent literature; but we should have deemed it far greater had had it illustrated completely Longfellow’s grand words:—”

Tablet

August 17, 1872

Full Review

“MORE than half of this curious and deeply interesting tale has been written, and yet we are no nearer than before to any sunshine in poor Dorothea’s life.”

Vanity Fair

August 10, 1872

Full Review

“WE enter upon a much more complicated and intricate state of things in the new number of “Middlemarch.””

Volume VI

4.2

4.2 out of 5 stars (based on 11 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

The Morning Bulletin

December 26, 1872

Full Review

“In the present instalment of “Middlemarch” the plot is not greatly furthered, though all the characters are advanced one short stage.”

Tablet

October 26, 1872

Full Review

“The writing of this last book is in no way inferior to the rest, and we congratulate George Eliot on the purity of tone and feeling which she has hitherto maintained throughout her novel, and which we hope will be preserved to the end.”

Bell’s Weekly Messenger

October 12, 1872

Full Review

“We should have been glad indeed, if it had been in our power to have quoted this scene, as an illustration of George Elliot’s power, skill, and discernment.”

Aberdeen Journal

October 9, 1872

Full Review

“The whole passage is very well worth perusal, and suggest the deeply interesting question “How far is hypocrisy unconscious?”—one of those perplexing problems which on every side confront us in this grey world.”

Volume VII

4.1

4.1 out of 5 stars (based on 10 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

The Morning Bulletin

February 4, 1873

Full Review

“This number is entitled “Two Temptations,” and deals with the Lydgates and Mr. Bulstrode Lydgate, the young doctor who has begun his married life by living above his income, and finds his pretty, superficial wife but a poor help in his hour of adversity and retrenchment.”

Tablet

November 16, 1872

Full Review

“We are drawing towards the close of this very interesting tale and the next part is to be the last.”

The Standard

November 13, 1872

Full Review

“We wander on, with George Eliot, amused if not excited, through the mazes of this most practical story.”

Bell’s Weekly Messenger

November 9, 1872

Full Review

“As this truly clever novel approaches its conclusion, the interest which every previous page has developed is becoming, to the largest possible extent, intensified, proving most positively that, with the exception of Lord Lytton, there is no novelist of the present day that can be placed in the same rank with the lady, who writes under the well-known nom de plume of “George Eliot.””

Volume VIII

4.8

4.8 out of 5 stars (based on 11 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

Aberdeen Journal

January 22, 1873

Full Review

“One thing, however, is obvious—that Middlemarch is much more than a work of art: it is a work of art which is the consistent outcome of a theory of human life.”

Tablet

December 21, 1872

Full Review

“We have come to close of this most interesting novel, and although we may demur against some of its principles—though we do not believe that even the Protestant faith makes all men hypocritical, or miserable, or hopeless still there is so much that is admirable, and even wonderful, in George Eliot’s delineation of motives and character, so beautiful and careful an analysis of human thoughts and passions, and such life-pictures, drawn from what what we arc apt to look upon as the “mass” of people around us, that it is with no common regret that we see the curtain drop over the stage, and realize that the new year will give us no fresh volume of Middlemarch to interest and cheer us amidst the dreary waste of ordinary novels, and hackneyed or sensational tales, which crowd our tables.”

The Nonconformist

December 11, 1872

Full Review

“But now that “Middlemarch” is completed, we believe that in the judgment of the most intelligent critics, it will be considered to have done this and more than this for its gifted authoress. It is not only equal to any of her former books, but we doubt whether in pure intellectual strength, clear, and vigorous thinking, knowledge of the heart, and skill in depicting some of its subtlest workings, and terse epigrammatic style, it does not surpass them all.”

Greenock Advertiser

December 10, 1872

Full Review

“Every library should have copies of it.”

General Review(s) (During Serialized Installments)

4.7

4.7 out of 5 stars (based on 7 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

Boston Evening Transcript

October 26, 1872

Full Review

“Of course George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” is first of these; though incomplete, her half loaf is infinitely better than no bread, and vastly better than the whole loaves of most novel makers.”

Anonymous

Orchestra And The Choir

September 13, 1872

Full Review

“The novel may be a work of art like “Middlemarch,” which would be utterly spoilt if cut down for the stage; and numbers among the audience who contemplated buying the book might be turned away from their purpose on seeing an apparently feeble and vapid story before them.”

Anonymous

The Contemporary Review

August 1872

Full Review

“At the same time the novels of George Eliot are not didactic treatises. They are primarily works of art, and George Elliot herself is artist as much as she is teacher.”

Edward Dowden

The Globe

July 27, 1872

Full Review

“One of the most carefully drawn characters in “Middlemarch” is the pious and philanthropic banker Mr. Bulstrode. With searching subtlety pf analysis and a humour that seems to sound all depths and shallows of the characters it portrays, George Eliot pictures to us this respectable local potentate who prays and trades with equal perseverance, and makes the best of both worlds with an admirable adaptation of spiritual means to secular ends.”

Anonymous

General Review(s)

4.3

4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 42 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

December 1873

Full Review

“So we take our leave of a work which, if it stood alone, would have made an era in the literature of fiction. Following, as it does, a series of acknowledged masterpieces from the same hand, which gave a new character to the English “novel,” it would have been much to have been able to say that it maintained the reputation of its author. But we shall be surprised if the mature judgment passed upon it by those who can appreciate the work of a true artist—and we will admit that these may not be the majority of mere novel readers—does not pronounce it the most perfect of the series.”

W. Lucas Collins

Supplemental Notice(s)

Reprinted by Maga (December 8, 1872) and Littell’s Living Age (January 18, 1873)

The Christian Union

April 30, 1873

Full Review

“It seems odd though that none of the reviewers, not even J. W. C., who sees so many things that most people overlook, has noticed one feature of the work that impressed me most of all; namely, the influence, restless as fate, which woman in the intimate relations of life exerts upon man.”

Celia Burleigh

The Christian Union

April 23, 1873

Full Review

“The book is in no sense easy reading. The story is one which no person can read without thinking. However superficially one may run through this collection of many tales blended in one, he cannot fail to be impressed by the many grave reflections that spring of themselves out of the very tale, and to be stimulated by some of the weighty truths that are uttered in passing by the author, either as she moralizes like the chorus of a Greek tragedy, or as she utters the manifold wit and wisdom which she makes her characters speak.”

N. P.

The Christian Union

April 16, 1873

Full Review

“Our admiration for Middlemarch is mixed: it would be so great a novel if the philosophy were left out; and it would be such a work of philosophy, if the story were not all the time tugging at our sympathies. But who shall say, nevertheless, that philosophy itself is not best absorbed when the sympathies help the intellect?”

Anonymous

Supplemental Notice(s)

“Some things in the book suggest a comparison with George Eliot’s Middlemarch, though the latter is in all respects a far more powerful and remarkable work.” — The Christian Union (July 9, 1873)

The Atlantic Monthly

April 1873

Full Review

“An author whose novels it has really been a liberal education to read, one is more tempted to admire silently than to criticise at all.”

Arthur George Sedgwick

The British Quarterly Review

April 1, 1873

Full Review

“George Eliot has never displayed more imaginative and intellectual power than in this her latest and, in some important respects, her richest tale.”

R. H. Hutton

Evening Mail

March 10, 1873

Full Review

“But Middlemarch could well afford its faults, even though they were more than these.”

Anonymous

The Commercial Bulletin

March 8, 1873

Full Review

“Its style is graceful and easy, and its vigor of expression and conscientiousness of detail are very marked.”

Anonymous

Supplemental Notice(s)

“We have no hesitation, in pronouncing “Against the World,” by Jeanette R. Hadermann, as the best American novel of the season; and we have read no foreign one, except “Middlemarch,” that is superior.” — The Commercial Bulletin (April 19, 1873)

The Times

March 7, 1873

Full Review

“Yet these four volumes, as we need hardly say, though provincial in the outward form of their story, have depths and meanings “of the widest” interest.”

Frederick Napier Broome

The Galaxy

March 1873

Full Review

““Middlemarch” is at once one of the strongest and one of the weakest of English novels.”

Henry James

Bradford Observer

February 1, 1873

Full Review

“We have no fear as to the choice of the people of England, and so we can heartily enjoy “Middlemarch,” despite its erroneous morality, because we firmly believe that come what will and go what will, English society will always cherish the principle of duty, and save itself by that law of harmony of contradictions and co-ordination of inequalities, which dominates natural human nature, as well as the rolling spheres whose law of life Newton revealed.”

Anonymous

Revue Des Deux Mondes

February 1873

Full Review

“One hardly dares to criticise the election scenes for being over-long, they have so much else to recommend them in their accurate, caustic examination of human ambition and weakness, and above all their mixture of judicious good feeling and prudent noncommitment where the issue of political reform and social improvement arises; but these noble, weighty qualities, forceful and sensitive as they might be, are not enough to make up for a flagrant offence against the essential rules of art: Middlemarch is made up of a succession of unconnected chapters, following each other at random — with the result that the final effect is one of an incoherence which nothing can justify.”

Thérèse Bentzon

The Nation

January 23, 1873

Full Review

“You will find in the latter a number of characters quite as striking and perhaps more consistent than those painted by the author of ‘Middlemarch.’”

A. V. Dicey

Supplemental Notice(s)

Reprinted by The Globe (February 3, 1873)

Chicago Daily Tribune

January 19, 1873

Full Review

““Middlemarch” is singularly free from the pretension of a purpose, the air of having some good lesson cloaked under its brilliances, of amusing us and making us good-natured, in order, at the propitious moment, to insert a nauseous dose of medicinal advice or morality between our relaxed lips.”

Anonymous

Vanity Fair

January 4, 1873

Full Review

“The plot of the story is nothing, but the people are everything; and it would be difficult to say which of the characters is most carefully and truly delineated, for each is perfect in his or her way.”

Anonymous

The Globe

January 4, 1873

Full Review

“In one of the many at once fascinating and irritating sarcasms which it was impossible not to look forward to and backward at, while Middlemarch was still incomplete, and life had still a literary object, George Eliot says:—”

Anonymous

Average Rating

4.3

4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 174 reviews)

Excellent Very good Average Poor Terrible

“Middlemarch” – Initial Reception

What Did Critics First Think Of This Classic?

The Penn Monthly

Lippincott’s Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science

American Journal Of Education

Peterson’s Magazine

The Christian Union

The Morning Bulletin

Magnet

John Bull

John Bull

Tablet

Aberdeen Journal

The Standard

Magnet

Aberdeen Journal

Tablet

Vanity Fair

John Bull

Aberdeen Journal

Tablet

Vanity Fair

The Morning Bulletin

Tablet

Bell’s Weekly Messenger

Aberdeen Journal

The Morning Bulletin

Tablet

The Standard

Bell’s Weekly Messenger

Aberdeen Journal

Tablet

The Nonconformist

Greenock Advertiser

Boston Evening Transcript

Orchestra And The Choir

The Contemporary Review

The Globe

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine

The Christian Union

The Christian Union

The Christian Union

The Atlantic Monthly

The British Quarterly Review

Evening Mail

The Commercial Bulletin

The Times

The Galaxy

Bradford Observer

Revue Des Deux Mondes

The Nation

Chicago Daily Tribune

Vanity Fair

The Globe

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