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Cover of Adam Bede (version 2)

Adam Bede (version 2)

George Eliot

Length
25 h 45 min
Chapters
62
Language
English
First published
1859

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans – an ironic ‘deception’ given that Adam Bede, her first novel, is written unashamedly from a feminist standpoint.

The story centres on a pastoral love triangle. Two young men, carpenter Adam Bede and squire Captain Arthur Donnithorne, are both in love with the mercurial Hetty Sorrel. There’s a further love interest between Adam and beautiful lay preacher Dinah Morris.

The setting is a country village in the north of England in the last years of the eighteenth century. The author paints a wonderful landscape of contemporary life as it really was, and excels in the portraits of her characters. Each is flawed, each has their own passions, each is unique, and through this great novel, Eliot put her stamp on literature and on the way we view the vagaries of character, helping us to see people as they really are.

This is one of the greatest novels in the English language. First published in 1859, Adam Bede has never been out of print since, which speaks volumes about its timeless quality. - Summary by Tom Denholm

Chapters

From LibriVox, read by volunteers and in the public domain. LibriVox page (opens librivox.org), the text (opens gutenberg.org), all files on the Internet Archive (opens archive.org).