Rebecca Mead’s “Middlemarch and Me”

From New Yorker's archive: Rebecca Mead chronicles the evolution of her perspective on George Eliot's work, and how her thinking about the novel—and its significance for her own path—has changed over the decades.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   View in browser | Update your preferences     Life and Letters Middlemarch and Me With each reading, I became only more grateful for George Eliot's wise, consoling grace. By Rebecca Mead The writer Rebecca Mead is a master at composing singular, inventive literary narratives. Since 1997, she has contributed nearly five hundred pieces to The New Yorker. She has written about a wide variety of topics, including the musical stylings of the playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, the byzantine nature of the bridal industry, the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard's battle against online trolls, and the innovative work of the novelist Margaret Atwood. She has also published two books, including "One Perfect Day," her expanded look at the business behind weddings. For the past few years, she has been writing Letter from the U.K. dispatches for the magazine, among other work. Mead's pieces deftly reveal the finer details of her subjects. In 2011, she published "Middlemarch and Me," an essay about the influence on her own life of George Eliot's novel "Middlemarch," which imagines the personal and political upheavals of a sprawling cast of characters in a small town in nineteenth-century England. (The piece was later expanded into a book, "My Life in Middlemarch," which was published in 2014.) Mead chronicles the evolution of her perspective on Eliot's work, and how her thinking about the novel—and its significance for her own path—has changed over the decades. "With each reading I became only more grateful for Eliot's wise, consoling grace, and only more admiring of the quiet celebration of the unremarkable that infuses the book's unforgettable conclusion: 'The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts,' " she writes. Striving for a remarkable life may be a worthy goal, Mead seems to say, but the meaning of that life is measured by more than simple heroics. And there is beauty and delight as well in the quiet, unheralded choices we make that chart the course of our journey.   —Erin Overbey, archive editor More from the Archive     Profiles Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia Her fiction has imagined societies riddled with misogyny, oppression, and environmental havoc. These visions now feel all too real. By Rebecca Mead     Books Virginia Woolf's Consciousness of Reality In her diary, the author of "Mrs. Dalloway" left behind the most truthful record of what a writer's life is actually like. By W. H. Auden This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To ensure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com.    For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions.   View our Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe.   Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.