As Daniel Deronda opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper classes. And while Gwendolen loses everything and becomes trapped in an oppressive marriage, Deronda's fortunes take a different turn.
After a dramatic encounter with the young Jewish woman Mirah, he becomes involved in a search for her lost family and finds himself drawn into ever-deeper sympathies with Jewish aspirations and identity. 'I meant everything in the book to be related to everything else,' wrote George Eliot of her last and perhaps most ambitious novel, and in weaving her plot strands together she created a bold and richly textured picture of British society and the Jewish experience within it. Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator and later editor of the Westminster Review.
In 1857, she published SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of 'George Eliot', including THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, MIDDLEMARCH, and DANIEL DERONDA.