Editing Middlemarch (section)

==Background==
[[File:George Eliot at 30 by François D'Albert Durade.jpg|thumb|left|upright|George Eliot]]
''Middlemarch'' originates in two unfinished pieces that Eliot worked on during 1869 and 1870: the novel "''Middlemarch''{{-"}}{{efn|The title of this earlier work is put in quotes in order to distinguish it from the eventual novel of the same title.}} (which focused on the character of Lydgate) and the long story "Miss Brooke" (which focused on the character of Dorothea).{{sfnp |Swinden |1972 |p=12}} The former piece is first mentioned in her journal on 1 January 1869 as one of the tasks for the coming year. In August she began writing, but progress ceased in the following month amidst a lack of confidence in it and distraction by the illness of [[George Henry Lewes]]'s son Thornie, who was dying of [[tuberculosis]].{{sfnp |Ashton |1983 |p=300}} (Eliot had been living with Lewes since 1854.) After Thornie's death on 19 October 1869, all work on the novel stopped; it is uncertain whether Eliot intended at the time to revive it at a later date.{{sfnp |Ashton |1983 |p=295}}

In December she wrote of having begun another story, on a subject that she had considered "ever since I began to write fiction".{{sfnp |Swinden |1972 |p=29}} By the end of the month she had written 100 pages of this story and entitled it "Miss Brooke". Although a precise date is unknown, the process of incorporating material from "''Middlemarch''{{-"}} into the story she had been working on was ongoing by March 1871.{{sfnp |Ashton |1983 |pp=311–12}}{{sfnp |Swinden |1972 |p=12}} While composing, Eliot compiled a notebook of hundreds of literary quotations, from poets, historians, playwrights, philosophers, and critics in eight different languages.<ref>M.a.13–14, from the collection of the [[Folger Shakespeare Library]]; [http://www.folger.edu/manuscripts] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200605151116/https://www.folger.edu/manuscripts|date=5 June 2020}}.</ref>

By May 1871, the growing length of the novel had become a concern to Eliot, as it threatened to exceed the [[Three-volume novel|three-volume]] format that was then the norm in publishing.{{sfnp |Beaty |1960 |p=43}} The issue was compounded because Eliot's most recent novel, ''[[Felix Holt, the Radical]]'' (1866) – also set in the same pre-Reform Bill England – had not sold well.{{sfnp |Ashton |1983 |p=287}} The publisher [[John Blackwood (publisher)|John Blackwood]], who had made a loss on acquiring the English rights to that novel,{{sfnp|Beaty|1960|p=43}} was approached by Lewes in his role as Eliot's literary agent. He suggested that the novel be brought out in eight two-monthly parts, borrowing the method used for [[Victor Hugo]]'s novel ''[[Les Misérables]]''.{{sfnp |Ashton |1994 |p=viii}} This was an alternative to the monthly issues that had been used for such longer works as [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]]'s ''[[David Copperfield]]'' and [[William Makepeace Thackeray|Thackeray]]'s ''[[Vanity Fair (novel)|Vanity Fair]]'', and avoided Eliot's objections to slicing her novel into small parts.{{sfnp |Beaty |1960 |pp=43–44}} Blackwood agreed, although he feared there would be "complaints of a want of the continuous interest in the story" due to the independence of each volume.{{sfnp |Swinden |1972 |p=30}} The eight books duly appeared during 1872, the last three instalments being issued monthly.{{sfnp |Beaty |1960 |p=55}}

With the deaths of Thackeray and Dickens in 1863 and 1870, respectively, Eliot became "recognised as the greatest living English novelist" at the time of the novel's final publication.{{sfnp |Ashton |1994 |p=1}}