Scenes of Clerical Life
by George Eliot
When George Eliot's first novel, Scenes of Office Life, was published anonymously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857, it immediately became known as "the production of a strange and remarkable writer," in the words of the Saturday Review. Early readers, including Dickens and Thackeray, were stunned by his humorous irony, his righteousness in presenting the lives of ordinary men and women, and his tender acceptance of human weakness. The three stories that make up the scenes, The Sad Fortune of Reverend Amos Barton, Mr. Gilfield's Love Story and Janet's Atonement are harbingers of George Eliot's masterpiece, and his achievements have given him the confidence to become one of the greatest English novelists.
