Silas Marner

The story of Silas Marner's redemption and restoration, which is interwoven with the lives of Eppie, Dolly Winthrop, Dunstan and Godfrey, is part beautifully realized portraiture of rural England and part fairy tale. Silas Marner has long been the most beloved and widely read book by George Eliot, the pen name for the 19th century English woman writer Marian Evans.

Silas Marner is an amazing presentation of Eliot's power to combine symbolic and realistic narrative. In the story of an isolated, misanthropic old weaver - whose life is forever changed by the appearance of a little girl (Eppie) in his cottage - Eliot created a compact, tightly structured, pleasingly patterned novel. The tale is one that endorses the common goodness of rural people, yet remains agnostic as to the ultimate cause of good and evil.