1871–72 · Blackwood · eight parts, as first issued
Read Middlemarch online in three weeks, one planned sitting at a time.
Middlemarch runs to about 316,000 words. Set aside three weeks, not a weekend. The full text is free to read, split into its eight original books, with a planner that tells you where to stop each day. Book club packs are quoted on request.
- Words
- ~316,000
- At 238 wpm
- 22 h 08 min
- Books · chapters
- 8 · 86
- Price
- Free online
The eight-book planner
Three weeks at about 63 minutes a day
Each book is timed at 238 words a minute. Word counts are rounded to the nearest thousand from our own text. Days assume you read every day; a book club meeting weekly takes roughly one book and a half each week, and finishes in five or six.
Book I · ch. 1–12
Miss Brooke
Book II · ch. 13–22
Old and Young
Book III · ch. 23–33
Waiting for Death
Book IV · ch. 34–42
Three Love Problems
Book V · ch. 43–53
The Dead Hand
Book VI · ch. 54–62
The Widow and the Wife
Book VII · ch. 63–71
Two Temptations
Book VIII · ch. 72–86
Sunset and Sunrise, and Finale
Book I · Chapter 1
Read the opening of chapter one
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day’s newspaper.
Book I, chapter 1, first paragraph. The Prelude on Saint Theresa comes before it and takes about three minutes.
Editor’s note on the Blackwood text
We set Middlemarch from the eight-part first issue and checked doubtful readings against the 1874 one-volume edition, which Eliot revised. Where the two disagree on a word, we follow 1874 and note it. There are 41 such notes, most of them tiny: a comma, a “which” for a “that”.
Each chapter keeps its epigraph. Many free copies drop them because they break the page template. Eliot wrote a good number of those epigraphs herself and signed them only with a line, so cutting them removes her voice from the head of the chapter. They stay, set in smaller type so they read as what they are.
The planner above is the part of this page we get thanked for most. It exists because the most common email we get about this book is some version of “I stopped in Book III.” Knowing that Book III ends at chapter 33 turns out to be enough to finish it.
Content notes
- A long, cold marriage, and a husband who tries to control his wife after his death.
- A death at a sickbed in Book VII, where a doctor’s orders are quietly ignored.
- Money trouble and public disgrace; no violence on the page.
Correction ledger
What we fixed after it went live
Live since 9 August 2022. Newest first. Reported errors are checked within 7 days under our text accuracy guarantee.
- 2024-07-22Ch. 42: epigraph restored. It had been dropped when the chapter file was split.Book IV
- 2024-01-30Ch. 61: paragraph break restored between Bulstrode and Harriet. Two speakers had merged.Book VI
- 2023-08-14Ch. 15:
Lydgate’sLydgate. Stray possessive, our error.Book II - 2023-03-06Planner: Book VIII word count corrected from ~41,000 to ~44,000. The Finale had not been counted.planner
- 2022-12-01Ch. 20: Greek word in Casaubon’s notes restored with its accents.Book II
- 2022-09-18Ch. 1:
to-daysto-day’s. Apostrophe lost in conversion.Book I
Packs for Middlemarch
What a group pack involves for a book this size
At 86 chapters, a printed Middlemarch is a heavy object. Most groups ask for it split into two or four volumes following Eliot’s own books, so nobody carries 800 pages to a meeting. The price depends on copies, format and the split, and is quoted by email.
Tell us the group and the schedule
Number of readers, how many need large print, and how many weeks you want to take. Five weeks is the common choice.
We reply with a quote and a planner for your dates
Usually within two working days, from the same person who will prepare the pack.
You say yes, or nothing happens
No payment is taken on this site and no deposit is asked before you confirm.
Volumes arrive in reading order
If you meet weekly, we can send volume one first so the group can start before the rest is ready.
Honest answers for a long book
Is three weeks realistic?
At an hour a day, yes. At twenty minutes on a commute, plan on nine weeks. The planner scales; the book doesn’t.
Do you sell an abridged version for busy groups?
No. We don’t abridge anything. If the full length is wrong for your group, try The Age of Innocence, which covers similar ground in about a third of the words.
Who is this edition not for?
Anyone who needs a critical edition with line numbers for citation. Ours is a reading text. Use a university press edition for a thesis.
Group packs · quoted on request
Ask about a Middlemarch pack
Tell us how many readers and when you meet. Formats and lead times are on the reading groups page.