The book in focus in this issue is MIDDLEMARCH: A STUDY OF PROVINCIAL LIFE by Mary Ann Evans who, for reasons of societal sexism, wrote under the pen name George Eliot. This sprawling English novel tends to be accompanied by phrases like ‘but it’s just so long’ from those who haven’t read it, and ‘the best novel in the English language’ from those who have. 

Find the following writings in Part 2 of the issue:

George Eliot reads the news by Rebecca Mead — Railways, cholera, covid, kindness

My twenties, my thirties, my forties… by Rob Palk — The success world is not my world

Some times I set a good example by Jean Hannah Edelstein — My life as a moral model

Middlemarch, 2022

Book club with old friend who happens to be a film star by Deborah Friedell — Three-act reread with the brilliant Jordana Brewster

The Happy Reader is a collaboration between Penguin Classics and Fantastic Man.