Eliot's “Middlemarch” and Other Works, Illustrated, 10 Volumes, 1908.

ELIOT, George. The Works of George Eliot. New York: Sully & Kleinteich, 1908. First Edition thus, University Edition. Ten (10) volumes, complete. Octavo (8vo). Uniformly bound in half morocco over marbled boards with gilt lettering and decorative gilt devices to spines; top edges gilt, others thickly deckled; wide margins. Illustrated with frontispieces and plates in each volume.

Contents includes unopened gatherings present throughout many volumes, giving evidence of its gentle handling. Internally clean with occasional light foxing to title pages and frontispieces, as usual. All frontispieces and contents present. Bindings sound and square with light rubbing to joints and spine extremities, some bumping of corners, as expected. Light to moderate chipping to leather spine edges, most pronounced to Volumes III, IV, and X. Overall, a well-preserved set with strong shelf presence.

Issued during the early twentieth-century revival of Victorian authors presented in uniform library sets, the University Edition includes Eliot’s principal works: Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Felix Holt, Clerical Life, Ramola, Poems, Life Of Eliot.

Published under the nom de plume “George Eliot,” Mary Ann Evans adopted a male pseudonym to ensure her fiction would be judged seriously within the male-dominated literary culture of Victorian England. Her unconventional personal life, including her long partnership with the married George Henry Lewes, a prominent Victorian writer and literary critic, further intensified public interest in the author and her work. Eliot’s novels, including Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, and Adam Bede, remain among the defining achievements of nineteenth-century English fiction, celebrated for their psychological depth, moral complexity, and realism.