Recommendations
Books Like Silas Marner
Best books to read after Silas Marner by George Eliot
Readers who love Silas Marner by George Eliot are drawn to its combination of the most concentrated and fable-like of her novels, the story of the miser restored to the human community through the love of a child, and the formal perfection of the parable form that Eliot uses to investigate the replacement of money by love and isolation by community. They want works that deal with the Victorian pastoral fable, the theme of redemption and community, and the specifically realized English Midlands world that Eliot draws from her own childhood.
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Adam Bede
by George Eliot
Eliot's companion first novel — the pastoral tragedy of Hetty Sorrel. The companion as the longer and darker investigation of the same English Midlands rural world: where Silas Marner is organized around restoration and recovery, Adam Bede is organized around tragedy and the consequences of moral weakness
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Middlemarch
by George Eliot
The companion masterpiece — Dorothea Brooke and Lydgate. The companion as the fully realized version of Eliot's social investigation: the same provincial world at a much larger scale, with a richer philosophical investigation of the relationship between aspiration, limitation, and the possibility of genuine community
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The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
The companion — Maggie Tulliver's tragic search for a life the world cannot give her. The companion as the autobiographical and more tragic investigation of the same Midlands world: written immediately before Silas Marner, and the darker, more personal version of the same English provincial community
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A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's companion — Scrooge's conversion from miser to benefactor. The companion in the Victorian tradition of the miser's redemption: both Silas Marner and Scrooge are men whose relationship to money has replaced their relationship to the human community, and both are redeemed by a form of grace
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The Winter's Tale
by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's companion investigation of the fable-like form — Leontes, Hermione, and Perdita. The companion as the literary tradition that organizes Silas Marner: the pastoral tragicomedy that moves from loss to restoration, from winter to spring, through the agency of a child
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Daniel Deronda
by George Eliot
Eliot's companion last novel — Gwendolen Harleth and Daniel Deronda. The companion as the fully realized late Eliot: where Silas Marner is the most direct and fable-like investigation of isolation and community, Daniel Deronda is the most complex and politically engaged investigation of the same themes
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Far from the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion pastoral — Bathsheba Everdene in Dorset. The companion as the investigation of the same English rural community in the late Victorian mode: both novels are organized around the relationship between community and individual aspiration in a specifically realized agricultural world
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Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's companion — Pip's discovery that his great expectations come from a convict. The companion as the Victorian investigation of the same theme of isolation, identity, and the relationship between money and genuine community: like Silas Marner's discovery that his gold was less valuable than his relationship to Eppie, Pip discovers that his great expectations were worth less than what he had originally
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