Middlemarch - have just noticed it is very long

[kev67]

Since the Garths are minor characters in Middlemarch, we see mainly their good side. All the major character, including Lydgate and Dorothea, are shown to be misguided in various ways, just as we are.

Eliot thinks highly of Dorothea's quest but not of the way she furthers it. Like Lydgate, Mrs Bulstrode, Casaubon and Celia, all of us make life-changing choices from limited options - choices that have serious downsides. Incidentally, do we know that either Dorothea or Lydgate regret their unfortunate marriages?

Dorothea never admits regretting her marriage to Mr Casaubon, although I remember reading Lydgate thinking his marriage was a calamity. Both make the best of it.

[Jackson Richardson]

Other Victorian novels are long but Middlemarch is particularly long.

It’s difficult comparing the length of books by number of pages since the number of words on the page depends on the size of the font and the size of the page.

I have Middlemarch in the old hardback Oxford World Classics series and the only Victorian novels I can directly compare are those of Trollope, who certainly could write longer novels. Here are some novels with length in pages

Middlemarch 879
He Knew He Was Right 930
The Way We Live Now 952
Last Chronicles of Barset 912.

Last Chronicles makes an interesting comparison – a panoramic novel with several sub plots set around a provincial town. It was published four years before Middlemarch (and isn’t a patch on it) but it may have been an inspiration. It is certainly the same sort of novel superficially.

In other editions, I have a similar size volume of Our Mutual Friend 960 pages. Little Dorrit in large hardback is at 824. Thackery’s The Newcomes in the large format Penguin Classics is 818.

So Middlemarch is long but not that long.

[Jackson Richardson]

Not every Victorian novel is a dull Dickensian tome; the Brontes and Hardy wrote relatively normal-sized books.

I can understand anyone finding Dickens sentimental, melodramatic, unconvincing, unrealistic and generally tedious to read, but intrinsically dull? Never!
Personally I love him.