Scenes of a Clerical Life

"My only merit must lie in the faithfulness with which I represent to you the humble experience of an ordinary fellow mortal"

When "Scenes of a Clerical Life" George Elliot's first work of fiction was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857, it was immediately recognised as the person who wrote for the Saturday review. As the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer the first readers included Dickens and Thackery, they were struck by its humorous irony, the truthful and humorous irony of its presentation of the lives of the ordinary men and women and the compassionate acceptance of human weakness.

This book was a set book for an Open University Course as an insight into the human mind and precognitive issues the book shows up of how people can be read and undermined by their fellow critics. I was surprised at the way others react to not only their peers but to people lower than themselves in the class system.

This book is one of the few classics that I had to read but I must say thoroughly enjoyed because it plots the life of The Reverend Amos Barton - three stories within one book the first being about The Reverend, the second based on Mr Griffith's Love Story and the third on Janet's Repentance.

Wonderful flowery language, and wonderful descriptions of life and much, much more. This book is well worth a read, and a great classic. Within the covers you get a book that has explanatory notes to help with study on the text, a short biography and also a chronology of George Elliott.

Book published By Oxford Worlds Classic