Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is the love story between the good shepherd Gabriel Oak and the proud heiress Bathsheba Everdene. Bathsheba scorns Gabriel's first bald proposal, and many years pass, seeing their positions in society change, as well as their relationship to each other. Bathsheba must see the tragic consequences of her easy use of others before she understands who her truest friend is.

Middlemarch is George Eliot's great novel of idealism, self-delusion, marriage, hypocrisy, education and the status of women. Though set against a backdrop of widespread social and economic change, Middlemarch is still, as its subtitle states, A Study of Provincial Life, and an exploration of the idea that "the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts."