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Prepare for a long Middlemarch

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From: The Independent - London
Date: 19940109
Author:JOSEPHINE BALMER

"I CALL it bad," wrote Samuel Butler of Middlemarch in 1873, soon after its publication. "The book seems to me to be a long- winded piece of brag, clever enough, I dare say, but to me rather unattractive."

It has proved a minority opinion. Another early reviewer said with excitement that George Eliot had "never displayed more imaginative and intellectual power", and Virginia Woolf was to declare Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".

But Butler was right about one thing at least: Middlemarch is very long. Even Kathleen Adams, secretary of the George Eliot ...

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