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How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About Felix Holt, the Radical by George Eliot Felix Holt, the Radical is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt". This came on the heels of the Second Reform Act of 1867 which expanded the right to vote beyond the landed classes and was written in the character of, and signed by, Felix Holt. Set during the time of the Reform Act of 1832, the story centers on an election contested by Harold Transome, a local landowner, in the "Radical cause" ("Radical" because Transome's version of "radicalism" isn't radical at all, but rather an application of the term to his politically stagnate lifestyle), contrary to his family's Tory traditions. Contrasting with the opportunism of Transome is the sincere, but opinionated, Radical Felix Holt. A subplot concerns the stepdaughter of a Dissenting minister who is the true heir to the Transome estate, but who is unaware of the fact. She becomes the object of the affections of both Harold Transome and Felix Holt.

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"If a woman really believes herself to be a lower kind of being, she should place herself in subjection....If not, let her show her power of choosing something better." This is the challenge thrown down to George Eliot's heroine, Esther Lyon, who dreams of marrying into a life of refinement. But as she struggles to make her choice between two men, Esther finds her values challenged. Felix Holt is a respectably educated young man who has relinquished opportunity for life as an artisan. An idealist, he burns to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans. Contrasted with Holt is the intelligent heir Harold Transome, whose political ambitions are a matter of business. Plot twists involving lines of inheritance and legitimacy complicate the love triangle.

Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt". This came on the heels of the Second Reform Act of 1867 which expanded the right to vote beyond the landed classes and was written in the character of, and signed by, Felix Holt. As the story starts, the reader is introduced to the fictitious community of Treby in the English Midlands in 1832, around the time of the First Reform Act. Harold Transome, a local landowner, has returned home after a fifteen-year trading career in the Far East. Wealthy from trade, he stands for election to Parliament from the county seat of North Loamshire. But contrary to his family's Tory traditions, he intends to stand as a Radical. This alienates him from his traditional allies and causes despair for his mother, Mrs. Transome. Harold Transome gains the support of his Tory uncle, the Rector of Little Treby, and enlists the help of his family lawyer, Matthew Jermyn, as an electioneering agent.

Felix Holt, the Radical is a societal story of political disagreements in a little English village during the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. Mary Anne Evans also known as Mary Ann or Marian, who frequently uses the pseudonym George Eliot, was a British writer, poet, journalist, translator and among the primary authors of the Victorian period. She is the writer of seven books such as Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda, many of which are situated in local England and identified for their practicality and psychological outlook. She made use of a male pseudonym, she stated, to make sure that her novels would be taken earnestly. Female writers were printed using their real names at the time of Mary Ann’s life, but she needed to run off the typecast of women creating only carefree love stories. She also wanted to have her stories critiqued differently from her already broad and generally known writing as an editor and critic. An added aspect in her use of a pseudonym might have been a wish to protect her personal life from public enquiry and to avoid humiliations from her love affair with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she cohabited for more than 20 years. Mary Ann Evans was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. She was the daughter of Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson Evans, the daughter of a provincial mill-owner. Her complete siblings were Christiana, also called as Chrissey, Isaac and twin brothers who lived only for a number of days. She also had a half-brother, Robert, and half-sister, Fanny, from her father's first marriage to Harriet Poynton. Robert Evans, of Welsh lineage, was the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family in Warwickshire, and Mary Ann was born on the manor at South Farm.

Five-and-thirty years ago the glory had not yet departed from the old coach roads: the great roadside inns were still brilliant with well-polished tankards, the smiling glances of pretty barmaids, and the repartees of jocose hostlers; the mail still announced itself by the merry notes of the horn; the hedge-cutter or the rick-thatcher might still know the exact hour by the unfailing yet otherwise meteoric apparition of the pea-green Tally-ho or the yellow Independent; and elderly gentlemen in pony-chaises, quartering nervously to make way for the rolling, swinging swiftness, had not ceased to remark that times were finely changed since they used to see the pack-horses and hear the tinkling of their bells on this very highway. In those days there were pocket boroughs, a Birmingham unrepresented in Parliament and compelled to make strong representations out of it, unrepealed corn-laws, three-and-sixpenny letters, a brawny and many-breeding pauperism, and other departed evils; but there were some pleasant things, too, which have also departed.Non omnia grandior ætas quæ fugiamus habet, says the wise goddess: you have not the best of it in all things, O youngsters! the elderly man has his enviable memories, and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey in mid-spring or autumn on the outside of a stage coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet through a tube, by atmospheric pressure, from Winchester to Newcastle: that is a fine result to have among our hopes; but the slow, old fashioned way of getting from one end of our country to the other is the better thing to have in the memory. The tube-journey can never lend much to picture and narrative; it is as barren as an exclamatory O! Whereas, the happy outside passenger, seated on the box from the dawn to the gloaming, gathered enough stories of English life, enough of English labors in town and country, enough aspects of earth and sky, to make episodes for a modern Odyssey. Suppose only that his journey took him through that central plain, watered at one extremity by the Avon, at the other by the Trent. As the morning silvered the meadows with their long lines of bushy willows marking the water-courses, or burnished the golden corn-ricks clustered near the long roofs of some midland homestead, he saw the full-uddered cows driven from their pasture to the early milking. Perhaps it was the shepherd, head-servant of the farm, who drove them, his sheep-dog following with a heedless, unofficial air, as of a beadle in undress.

Excerpt from Felix Holt, the RadicalAnd such stories often come to be fine in a sense that is not ironical. For there is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it some downfall of blindly-climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some quickly-sati ated desire that survives, with the life in death of old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny - some tragic mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern between will and destiny. But these things are often nu known to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make hu man agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beg gared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer - committed to no sound except that of low means in the night, seen in no writing ex cept that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt". This came on the heels of the Second Reform Act of 1867 which expanded the right to vote beyond the landed classes and was written in the character of, and signed by, Felix Holt.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... !• CHAPTER rV. ': "A pious aid painful preacher.••--Fullnr. • Mr' Lyon lived in a small house, not quite so good as the: parish clerk's, adjoining the entry which led to the Chapel Yard. The new prosperity of Dissent at Treby had led to an, enlargement of the chapel, which absorbed all extra.funds and loft noue for the enlargement of.the minister's' income. He eat this morning, as usual, in a low upstairs room, called hia study, which, by means of a closet capable of holding his bed, served also as a sleeping-room. The book-shelves did not suffice for his store of old books, which lay about hdnvin piles so arranged ai? to leave narrow lanes between them; for the' minister was much given to walking' about during his hours of meditation, and very narrow passages would serve for his small logs, unencumbered by any other drapery than his black silk stockings and the flexible, though prominent,, bows of black ribbon thai tied his knee J breeches. He was walking about now, with his hands clasped behind.him, an attitude in'which his body seemed to bear about the same proportion to his head as the lower part of a stone Hermes bears to the carven image that crowns it. His face looked old and worn, yet the curtain of hair that fell from his bald crown and hung about his neck retained much of its original auburn tint, and his large, brown, short-sighted eyes were still clear and bright. At the first glance, every one thought him a very odd-looking rusty old man; the freeschool boys often hooted after him, and called him "Revelations ;" and to many respectable Church people, old Lyon's little legs and large head seemed to make Dissent additionally preposterous. But he was too short-sighted to notice those who tittered at...

Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt". This came on the heels of the Second Reform Act of 1867 which expanded the right to vote beyond the landed classes and was written in the character of, and signed by, Felix Holt. Set during the time of the Reform Act of 1832, the story centers on an election contested by Harold Transome, a local landowner, in the "Radical cause" ("Radical" because Transome's version of "radicalism" isn't radical at all, but rather an application of the term to his politically stagnate lifestyle), contrary to his family's Tory traditions. Contrasting with the opportunism of Transome is the sincere, but opinionated, Radical Felix Holt. A subplot concerns the stepdaughter of a Dissenting minister who is the true heir to the Transome estate, but who is unaware of the fact. She becomes the object of the affections of both Harold Transome and Felix Holt.