Middlemarch

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A realist novel by George Eliot, published in parts in 1871 and 1872, that follows several lives in a provincial English community ; the imaginary provincial town in which that novel's events unfold
2. George Eliot's 1871 to 1872 literary work portraying many interlinked lives in a country town ; the fictional English provincial setting where the characters of that book live and work
3. A celebrated Victorian novel by George Eliot about social and personal ambitions ; the made-up English country town that serves as the backdrop for that story

Etymology: Middlemarch is not a common noun, and its history is a literary one. It is the title of George Eliot's novel, published in serial parts from 1871 to 1872 and in book form in 1874, and it names the fictional English provincial town at the novel's centre. Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, chose the name for a place that combines the familiar English "middle" with "march," a term for a border region, and the combination suggests a town in the middle of the country that is not quite a city, a contrast the novel draws out between provincial life and wider ambition. The name is built from two plain English elements. "March" comes from Old English and Old French roots meaning a boundary or frontier land, the same root behind the "marches" of the Welsh and Scottish borders. "Middle" is simply the central part. Eliot modelled the setting loosely on the Warwickshire of her youth, and the word's pattern follows older English town names, which is why it sounds like a real place to readers.