Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life
First sentence
Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?...
Description
Middlemarch, widely regarded as one of the best English novels, is a thorough "study of provincial life," as the subtitle implies. The novel takes place in a fictitious Midlands town, chronicling the lives of its citizens in the early 1830s. The story revolves around the lives of Dorothea Brooke, a woman who dreams of a full life based on marriage and helping others, and Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor driven by professional ambition. It provides a very realistic view of society's complex interactions, the impacts of political change, and the profound psychological aspects of human nature.