Adam Bede Audio Book MP3-CD Unabridged

Adam Bede
Author: George Eliot
Reader: David Case

Set in the English Midlands at the turn of the 18th century, this classic focuses beautifully on three people troubled by unwise love. Young Adam Bede loves too blindly; Hetty Sorrel, pretty and vain, loves too recklessly; and Squire Arthur Donnithorne loves too carelessly. Their foolishness leads them into a triangle of seduction, retribution, and murder. Includes bonus PDF e-book. » Read More

Available Audio Book Editions:

F2M894

UNABRIDGED

Audio MP3-CD ( 2 )

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$29.99

Publish Date: 11/03/2008
ISBN: 9781400158942

F9M894

Unabridged

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$39.99

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Synopsis:

Inspired by an anecdote told to George Eliot by her aunt, ADAM BEDE is notable for its extraordinarily realistic characters and convincing depiction of English rural life, complete with the earthy Derbyshire dialect of the title character. It is the story of Hetty Sorrel, the dairymaid who spurns the working-class Adam, a carpenter, for the faithless lord of the manor, and is abandoned by him after she becomes pregnant. When it was first published, in 1859, the book earned praise for its nuanced and unflinching description of a young woman's fall from grace and for Adam's simple righteousness. But George Eliot's choice of this scandalous subject matter for her first novel also met a great deal of adverse criticism, and only reaffirmed her decision to publish her novels under a pseudonym rather than as Mary Ann Evans, her given name. ADAM BEDE has also become famous for Eliot's groundbreaking defense, in chapter 17, of realism in art: "I aspire to give no more than a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective....but I feel as much bound to tell you, as precisely as I can, what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box narrating my experience on oath." In this same section, she also makes a plea that her readers "tolerate, pity, and love" their fellow mortals despite their faults and sins--a sentiment that is embodied most vividly in ADAM BEDE.

Author Bio:

George Eliot's mother died young, and young Mary Ann Evans (as she was known until she was nearly 40) was raised by her father in a country town. She refused to embrace the fundamentalist religion of her father and, when she was 16, objected to going to church with him; however, she agreed to accompany him as long as she could be free to let her mind wander during the service. Soon after that, she translated THE LIFE OF JESUS by the German theologian David Friedrich Strauss into English--a work that questioned the divinity of Christ. Following the death of her father, George Eliot was free to lead the life of an intellectual and scholar; she moved to London and began to write for, and eventually edit, the Westminster Review. It was there that she met the man with whom she eventually spent most of her life, George Henry Lewes, who was married to another woman--a daring move in Victorian England, which resulted in Eliot's condemnation by her family, including her beloved brother, Isaac. (She explored the complexities of the brother-sister bond in her 1860 novel, THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.) With Lewes's encouragement, Eliot began to write novels and stories, and began publishing them in 1857, taking the pseudonym "George Eliot" largely to avoid the prejudice her public might have toward her unorthodox living arrangements. Upon Lewes's death, Eliot married a much younger man--delighting her family, who finally considered her respectable--but she died six months after the wedding. She became widely celebrated for her fiction, and is considered one of the greatest novelists of all time; D. H. Lawrence called her the first modern novelist. All her life, George Eliot was torn between her reverence for the old ways--religious, political, and social--in which she was raised, and the new, represented by her intellectual agnosticism and bohemian life. Always, she placed the responsibility for a person's life on the moral choices he or she makes, and she believed that the function of the novel is to increase people's sympathy and tolerance for others. As a strictly realist writer, she embraced the doctrine that "all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms...in place of definite, substantial reality."

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Adam Bede Audio Book

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