Adam Bede by George Eliot

A young carpenter falls in love with the village beauty. She, however, has set her sights on a dashing army captain who's the son of the wealthy local squire. Meanwhile, a beautiful and virtuous young woman preacher arrives in the village. What happens to these people and the strange twists and turns that their lives take are described in the rest of the book. Adam Bede was George Eliot's first published novel. Published in 1859, the book has remained a firm favorite with readers and academicians alike and is still taught in many English literature courses all over the world. George Eliot was the pen name of well respected scholar, translator and journalist Mary Ann Evans. She adopted a male pseudonym so she could be viewed as a serious writer. Many Victorian women writers had to combat the prevailing notion that women novelists wrote only light hearted romances or Gothic tales. Eliot was largely a self taught person. Her father was the manager of a stately home in Warwickshire an