Daniel Deronda

Searching for his life's purpose, young Daniel Deronda is immediately attracted to the beautiful but shallow Gwendolen Harleth during a chance meeting at a casino. As they pursue separate journeys of self-discovery, culminating in Daniel's discovery of his Jewish heritage, Daniel and Gwendolen reveal much about the depth of their characters and the circumstances that have influenced their lives.
Daniel Deronda was George Eliot's final, and arguably most controversial, novel. Many readers questioned the author's focus on Jewish characters and culture, and her criticism of their social position in England at that time. This criticism continued well into the twentieth century, when influential British literary critic F. R. Leavis re-released Daniel Deronda, excluding the sections focusing on the Jewish characters, and re-named it Gwendolen Harleth.
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George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot's best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.