On the 28th November 1860, George Eliot wrote in her diary that the idea of
Silas Marnerhad come to her all of a sudden while she was researching for her historical novel,
Romola. By the April 10th the following year it was finished and dispatched from Italy to her publisher John Blackwood in Edinburgh. Just over a month later it was already published and she was making a note of its success back in England. That success has continued to this day, and it remains one of the most popular novels ever written.
Stylistically, Silas Marner is the last of Eliot's rustic novels (after Scenes from Clerical Life (1857), Adam Bede (1858), andMill on the Floss (1860)). These novels carefully distinguish and exploit an opposition between the false values of modern life (the city, isolated
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Citation: Uglow, Nathan. "Silas Marner". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 April 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2085, accessed 02 December 2024.]