Silas Marner


"Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe," begun about November,
1860, and published early in 1861, is in many respects the
most admirable of all George Eliot's works. It is not a long
story, but it is a most carefully finished novel--"a perfect
gem, a pure work of art," Mr. Oscar Browning describes it. Mr.
Blackwood, the publisher, found it rather sombre, and George
Eliot replied to him, "I hope you will not find it at all a
sad story as a whole, since it sets--or is intended to set--in
a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural, human
relations. I have felt all through as if the story would have
lent itself best to metrical rather than to prose fiction,
especially in all that relates to the psychology of Silas;
except that, under that treatment, there could not be an equal
play of humour." No novel of George Eliot's has received more
praise from men of letters than "Silas Marner."


_I.--Why Silas Came to Raveloe_


In the early years of the nineteenth century a linen-weaver named Silas
Marner worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the
nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge
of a deserted stone-pit.

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he