Eliot's penetrating portrayal of a miser who learns to love an orphaned and abandoned child, this novel is a cherished masterwork and a moving story of redemption by the one of the Victorian era's most accomplished novelists. "I think Silas Marner holds a higher place than any of the author's works. It is more nearly a masterpiece; it has more of that simple, rounded, consummate aspect. . .which marks a classical work."—Henry James