George Eliot’s style developed during her early years as an exceptionally cultured journalist, translator, and editor, building a relation with her readers that rested on the authority of her wide-ranging scholarly and scientific references. But she also cautioned her readers about the limits of learning, and the need to locate knowledge in the context of sympathy. When she turned to fiction with the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857, she continued to build on these principles. An analysis of Middlemarch demonstrates that the flexible style of her mature writing continues to rest on a dazzling breadth of knowledge, coupled with an acknowledgement of the authority of feeling, and the moral responsibilities that are inseparable from our shared humanity.</p
