George Eliot 
Middlemarch 

Middlemarch is George Eliots great novel of idealism, self-delusion, marriage, hypocrisy, education and the status of women. Though set against a backdrop of widespread social and economic change, Middlemarch is still, as its subtitle states, A Study of Provincial Life, and an exploration of the idea that the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.