"The exquisite truth and delicacy, both of the humour and the pathos of those stories,
I have never seen the like of."Charles Dickens

"It is a first-rate novel, and its author takes rank at once among the masters of the art."Times
(London)

This work, George Eliot's fiction debut, contains three stories, all of which aim to disclose the value hidden
in the commonplace.

"The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," through vignettes of his life, portrays a character who is hard
to like and easy to ridicule. Many people do ridicule as well as slander and despise him, until his suffering
shocks them into fellowship and sympathy.

In "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," Eliot brings forth conflicting value systems revolving around a young woman Caterina
and two men, Wybrow who is capable of loving only himself, and Mr. Gilfil, whose love for Caterina is selfless
and perceptive.

The story "Janet's Repentance" is an account of conversion from sinfulness to righteousness achieved through
the selfless endeavors of an Evangelical clergyman.

George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans (1819-1880), was an English novelist of the first rank among Victorian novelists. She was born near Nuneaton, the daughter of a land agent. After her father's death, she became an assistant editor for the Westminster Review from 1851 to 1854. She wrote her first fiction in 1857 and her first full-length novel, Adam Bede, in 1859. Her novels presented a beautifully observed world of peasants and townsfolk, but her greatest preoccupation was with moral problems, especially the moral development of her characters.

Nadia May has been nominated as an AudioFile Golden Voice five years running and is a winner of thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. She is the co-founder of TheatreFirst, a theater company in the San Francisco Bay Area where she currently lives.