Daniel Deronda

George Eliot's final novel, 'Daniel Deronda' (1876), follows the intertwining lives of the beautiful but spoiled and selfish Gwendolene Harleth and the selfless yet alienated Daniel Deronda, as they search for personal and vocational fulfilment and sympathetic relationship. Set largely in the degenerate English aristocratic society of the 1860s, 'Daniel Deronda' charts their search for meaningful lives against a background of imperialism, the oppression of women, and racial and religious prejudice. Gwendolen's attempts to escape a sadistic relationship and atone for past actions catalyse her friendship with Deronda, while his search for origins leads him, via Judaism, to a quest for moral growth. Eliot's radical dual narrative constantly challenges all solutions and ensures that the novel is as controversial now, as when it first appeared. AUTHOR: George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880), one of the leading writers of Victorian times. Like many of her contemporary female writers, she published her books using a male name in order to be taken seriously. Her novels, including 'Adam Bede', 'The Mill on the Floss' and 'Middlemarch', have remained perennially popular and the subject of numerous television adaptations.