Finding Middlemarch


Finding middlemarch
Slide 1
Slide 1
Slide 1



1 Historicising the Recent Past

Historicising the Recent Past

Take a step back in time to the Coventry of Eliot’s childhood, explore the creation of Middlemarch from mind to manuscript, and learn how George Eliot quarried detail from recent memory. Exhibits include William Henry Brooke’s watercolour album of Coventry (1819) and John Astley’s Memorandum Book of Occurrences at Nuneaton (1810-1845), a priceless fragment of Nuneaton history rescued from a butchers shop in 1878.

2 The Ribbon Trade

The Ribbon Trade

How did Eliot weave the silk ribbon weaving industry into the plot of her novel and what can we learn about the manufacturing families of Middlemarch? Exhibits include a microscope manufactured by artisan weaver, Joseph Gutteridge (1816-1899) and the Coventry Town Ribbon (1851), a favourite of Queen Victoria.

3 Money in Middlemarch

Money in Middlemarch

What role does money and gambling play in the novel’s plot and how did games of chance permeate provincial society? Exhibits include William Powell Frith’s elaborate rebuke of lady luck — The Salon d’Or, Homburg (1871) and a map demonstrating the many of spirit merchants, beer houses and drinkeries active in Victorian Coventry.

4 Medical Reform

Medical Reform & the Distrust of Doctors

What kind of medical research did Eliot undertake for Middlemarch and how did she utilise her knowledge of the future to position Lydgate as a forward-thinking and progressive physician? Exhibits include the kind of domestic medicine chest that would have accompanied a doctor in the 1830s and a caricature of the questionable remedies that sprang up in the course of the cholera epidemic.

6 Parsons and the Clergy

Who informed Eliot’s characterisation of Middlemarch clergymen and why did the parson-naturalist often view scientific employment as an extension of his parochial duty? Exhibits include the Bree family Lepidoptera collection — disguised as different volumes of British Entomology c. 1833-1842 and discovered in a locked-up garage in Coventry in 2003.

7 Women’s Work

A Window into Women’s Lives

What kind of work was open to or expected of women in a Warwickshire provincial town? Moreover, in what ways was a wife expected to take on the professional identity of her husband? Exhibits include a doll’s cloak (thought to have been made by George Eliot and her schoolfellows) and a portable stationery cabinet, used by Eliot for letter writing.

previous arrowprevious arrow
next arrownext arrow
Historicising the Past
Historicising the Past

Take a step back in time to the Coventry of Eliot’s childhood, explore the creation of Middlemarch from mind to manuscript, and learn how George Eliot quarried detail from recent memory.

The Ribbon Trade
THE RIBBON TRADE

How did Eliot weave the silk ribbon weaving industry into the plot of her novel and what can we learn about the manufacturing families of Middlemarch?

Money in Middlemarch
Money in Middlemarch

What role does money and gambling play in the novel’s plot and how did games of chance permeate provincial society?

Medical Reform
Medical Reform & the Distrust of Doctors

What kind of medical research did Eliot undertake for Middlemarch and how did she utilise her knowledge of the future to position Lydgate as a forward-thinking and progressive physician?

Parsons & The Clergy
Provincial Piety & the Parson Naturalist

Who informed Eliot’s characterisation of Middlemarch clergymen and why did the parson-naturalist often view scientific employment as an extension of his parochial duty?

Women’s Work

What kind of work was open to or expected of women in a Warwickshire provincial town? Moreover, in what ways was a wife expected to take on the professional identity of her husband?









Finding Middlemarch
Slide 2
Slide 3

Slide 1
Slide 1