Adam Bede

Hailed for its sympathetic and accurate rendering of nineteenth-century English pastoral life, "Adam Bede" was George Eliot's first full-length novel and a bestseller from the moment of publication. Eliot herself called it "a country story--full of the breath of cows and scent of hay." Adam Bede is an earnest and virtuous carpenter who is betrayed by his love, Hetty Sorrel, a pretty yet foolish dairymaid who is seduced by a careless young villager. The bitter, tragic consequences of her actions shake the very foundations of their serene rural community. While "Adam Bede" represents a timeless story of seduction and betrayal, it is also a deeper, impassioned meditation on the irrevocable consequences of human actions and on moral growth and redemption through suffering.