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.