George Eliot

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Hetty Sorrel runs away to find Arthur, wanders in poverty, gives birth in secret and is accused of murdering her child.
Arrested and condemned at Stoniton, she confesses to Dinah Morris; Adam, broken with grief, forgives her while Arthur returns in time with a reprieve.
After the catastrophe Adam and Dinah marry, and life at the Hall Farm slowly begins again.

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The narrative follows David Faux, an ambitious but unscrupulous apprentice confectioner who steals his mother’s guineas, flees to the West Indies, then returns as “Edward Freely” to set up a prosperous shop in Grimworth.
His fabricated credentials and courtship of Penelope Palfrey are undone when his half-witted brother Jacob unexpectedly appears and reveals his true identity and past theft.
Exposed and shunned, Freely loses his business and prospects, the plot demonstrating the inevitable ruin brought by deceit and self-fashioning.

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Deronda discovers his Jewish parentage, accepts a vocation to work for the Jewish people, and, after declaring his love, becomes betrothed to Mirah Lapidoth. Mirah’s estranged father reappears—begging, stealing (first her purse, then Deronda’s ring) and being sheltered despite Ezra’s stern rebuke—and Ezra dies reconciled, blessing the spiritual union between Deronda and himself. Gwendolen, bereaved and conscience-stricken, resolves to reform and to live on despite being forsaken by Deronda’s impending Eastern departure.

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Esther Lyon, unexpectedly revealed as heiress and wooed by Harold Transome, is torn between social advancement and her deep attachment to Felix Holt, a radical watchmaker charged after election riots. She gives moving testimony at his trial (he is convicted but later reprieved amid local intervention), and ultimately renounces fortune and rank to marry Felix. The affair leaves lasting ruin and displacement—Jermyn disgraced, the Transomes broken—and the couple withdraw to a modest life together.

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A sequence of short essays that blend intimate self-examination with sharp social and literary satire.
It diagnoses human self‑deception, vanity, and temper; criticises shallow criticism, moral debasement by burlesque and commerce, and the excesses of facile authorship; and laments modern risks to national feeling and humane culture amid mechanisation.

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Bulstrode’s suspected past and the Raffles affair ignite a scandal that ruins Lydgate’s reputation and torments Bulstrode and his loyal wife.
Dorothea, convinced of Lydgate’s innocence, intervenes (practically and financially), while Rosamond and Lydgate’s marriage frays amid suspicion and Will Ladislaw’s involvement, leading to a growing attachment between Dorothea and Will.
The dénouement records steadier outcomes for secondary characters (Fred and Mary Garth prosper; Lydgate succeeds professionally but dies early) and Dorothea and Will’s enduring union, emphasizing sacrifice, social judgment, and private goodness.

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Romola wakes in a boat, rescues a child and nurses a pestilence-stricken valley—staying months to save the living, bury the dead, and have the Hebrew infant Benedetto baptized. She returns to Florence, learns of Tito’s death and Savonarola’s tortured confession and execution, and finds and shelters Tessa with her two children. Years later she lives quietly with the family, teaching Lillo and reflecting on duty, faith, and moral responsibility.

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Janet Dempster arranges lodgings at Holly Mount for Mrs. Pettifer and persuades the consumptive curate Edgar Tryan to take them, hoping change of air and reduced labours will help him.
Tryan temporarily improves but then declines; Janet nurses him through his final months and he dies in early spring.
His death profoundly reforms Janet: she devotes her life to quiet service, adopts a daughter, and remains the living memorial of his influence.

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Silas Marner, a devout weaver falsely accused and exiled, becomes a solitary miser in Raveloe, finding solace in hoarded gold.
After his gold is stolen, his life is transformed when an abandoned child, Eppie, comes to his hearth and, by raising her, he regains human affection and social integration.
Years later Eppie’s biological father appears and offers her a genteel life, but she chooses to remain with Silas; reconciliations follow and Silas attains lasting domestic fulfilment.

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Narrator with terminal angina and an intermittent clairvoyant faculty recounts how involuntary insight into others’ minds and recurrent visions of future events ruined his life. His obsessive passion for Bertha Grant, rivalry with his brother Alfred (who dies in an accident), and a dramatic post-mortem transfusion by Charles Meunier—which briefly revives the maid Archer and elicits an accusation against Bertha—lead to marital estrangement and lifelong isolation. The memoir examines the psychological cost of foreknowledge, ethical conflict between passion and responsibility, and the intersection of scientific experiment and human suffering as the narrator foresees his imminent death.

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Old Tulliver dies, and Tom and Maggie briefly reconcile.
Maggie’s arrival at St Ogg’s provokes a love-triangle (Stephen Guest and Philip Wakem), an anguished inward struggle, a rash flight with Stephen and her ultimate renunciation of that passion.
Shunned by society but aided by Dr Kenn, Maggie returns home and is killed with Tom in the Dorlcote flood; the Mill is rebuilt and their tomb bears “In their death they were not divided.”