I clung to a brick-like book all autumn: George Eliot’s novel *Middlemarch*. This work, spanning two volumes and 1,416 pages in its paperback translation, is a true "long-form" novel. Regarded as the ...

New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead first read George Eliot's "Middlemarch" at age 17, when she was an ambitious schoolgirl studying for entrance exams to Oxford. She recalls identifying "completely" with ...