Silas Marner

George Eliots tale of a solitary miser gradually redeemed by the joy of fatherhood Silas Marner is edited with an introduction and notes by David Carroll in Penguin Classics. Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house Silas is given the chance to transform his life. His fate and that of Eppie the little girl he adopts is entwined with Godfrey Cass son of the village Squire who like Silas is trapped by his past. Silas Marner George Eliots favourite of her novels combines humour rich symbolism and pointed social criticism to create an unsentimental but affectionate portrait of rural life. This text uses the Cabinet edition revised by George Eliot in 1878. David Carrolls introduction is complemented by the original Penguin Classics edition introduction by Q.D. Leavis. Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator and later editor of the Westminster Review. In 1857 she published Scenes of Clerical Life the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of George Eliot including The Mill on the Floss Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. If you enjoyed Silas Marner you might like Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter also available in Penguin Classics. I think Silas Marner holds a higher place than any of the authors works. It is more nearly a masterpiece; it has more of that simple rounded consummate aspect ... which marks a classical work Henry James Review I thinkSilas Marner holds a higher place than any of the authors works. It is more nearly a masterpiece; it has more of that simple rounded consummate aspect. . .which marks a classical work.-Henry James About the Author Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator and later editor of the Westminster Review. In 1857 she published SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of George Eliot including THE MILL ON THE FLOSS MIDDLEMARCH and DANIEL DERONDA. David Carroll taught at Lancaster University. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farm-houses-and even great ladies clothed in silk and thread-lace had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak-there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes or deep in the bosom of the hills certain pallid undersized men who by the side of the brawny country-folk looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?-and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread was not quite sure that this trade of weaving indispensable though it was could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted or even intermittent and occasional merely like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler if he came from distant parts hard