Scenes of Clerical Life (Oxford Worlds Classics)
by George Eliot
Category: Fiction

George Eliot's first published work consisted of three short novellas: "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", "Mr Gilfil's Love-Story", and "Janet's Repentance". The tales concern rural members of the clergy and the gossip and factions that a small town generates around them. Amos Barton only realizes how much he depends upon his wife's selfless love when she dies prematurely; Mr Gilfil's devotion to a girl who loves another is only fleetingly rewarded; and Janet Dempster suffers years of domestic abuse before the influence of an Evangelical minister changes her life. These depictions of the lives of ordinary men and women in a provincial Midlands town initiated a new era of nineteenth-century literary realism.