*registriert in: Bulle, Schweiz*

'My new story', wrote George Eliot in 1857, 'will be a country story - full of the breath of cows and the scent of hay', and "Adam Bede", George Eliot's first full-length novel, richly celebrates the long-vanished world of the rural community. Yet it is more than merely a charming pastoral, for it tells the story of tragically interlocking human destinies, of the seduction which destroys the young life of Hetty Sorrel and of the suffering which shapes Adam Bede into manhood.

George Eliot was convinced that the English novel could be a moral force only if insight of perception were matched by realism of presentation. "Adam Bede" is a masterly demonstration of her artistic subtlety, her compassion and her profound sense of human tragedy, which moved J.A. Froude to tell her that the book 'gave no pleasure. It gave palpitation of the heart'.

- in der Kirche

"As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again - her waking dreams being merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused."