Middlemarch

George Eliot, 1871

These peculiarities of Dorothea’s character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighboring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his nieces. But he himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea’s objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world—that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector’s wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle’s household, and did not at all dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged to it.

Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange to-day with another gentleman whom the girls had never seen, and about whom Dorothea felt some venerating expectation. This was the Reverend Edward Casaubon, noted in the county as a man of profound learning, understood for many years to be engaged on a great work concerning religious history; also as a man of wealth enough to give lustre to his piety, and having views of his own which were to be more clearly ascertained on the publication of his book. His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of scholarship.

1984
George Orwell
Get your free eBook now!
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Get your free eBook now!
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Get your free eBook now!
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Get your free eBook now!
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
The Brothers Grimm
Get your free eBook now!
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Get your free eBook now!
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Get your free eBook now!
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Get your free eBook now!
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Get your free eBook now!
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
Get your free eBook now!
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Get your free eBook now!