SynopsisMary Anne Evans (1819-1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity. Her most famous wo, As in all of George Eliot's best work, every class of society is included in this portrait of political ferment and corrupt electioneering in a small Midland borough in 1832. At the heart of the novel is George Eliot's conviction that "men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease."