Felix Holt, The Radical

When William Blackwood, George Eliot’s publisher, first saw the manuscript of Felix Holt in 1866 he could not contain his enthusiasm; in a letter to a friend he described the novel as “a perfect marvel. The time is 1832 just after the passing of the Reform Bill, and surely such a...series of pictures of English Life, manners, and conversation never was drawn. You see and hear the people speaking. Every individual character stands out a distinct figure.”

A political radical and a child of ...