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Definition: Bede, Adam from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

The title character of an 1859 novel by George Eliot. Adam Bede is an industrious carpenter who is infatuated with the dairymaid Hetty Sorrel, leading to a fight between Adam and her lover Arthur Donnithorne, but later comes to find a more suitable love in the form of the preacher Dinah Morris.


George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859)

From Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature: The Victorian Novel
Adam Bede is set in the ‘Eden-like peace and loveliness’ of Hayslope in Loamshire. Adam, a sturdy, honest carpenter, blindly loves Hetty Sorrel, who works as a dairymaid on the farm of her aunt and uncle Poyser. But the pretty, self-centred Hetty prefers the dashing regimental captain Arthur Donnithorne, and, unknown to Adam, she allows Arthur to seduce her. Adam violently persuades Arthur to end the relationship, but Hetty finds she is pregnant, and, failing to find Arthur, kills her baby. Discovered, she is sentenced to hang. Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher, spends a night with Hetty, bringing her to confession and inner peace. On the scaffold Arthur saves Hetty, bringing a reprieve, but she is deported and dies in exile. Adam marries the saintly Dinah, while the desolated Arthur goes abroad seeking atonement. The novel draws on George Eliot's warm childhood memories of Warwickshire. Adam is based on her worthy estate manager father. Her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, …
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Full text Article Bede, Adam

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
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English novelist, renowned for her powers of observation and characterization. Her novels include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861) and her masterpiece, Middlemarch (1871-2). Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it…
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Full text Article Eliot, George

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
George Eliot, chalk drawing by F.W. Burton, 1865;...
(born Nov. 22, 1819, Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Dec. 22, 1880, London) British novelist. Eliot was raised with a strong evangelical piety but broke with religious orthodoxy in her 20s. She worked as a translator, a critic, and a subeditor of the Westminster Review (1851–54). Later she…
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Full text Article George Eliot (1819–1880)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age. Letter, 1857 Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. Middlemarch bk 8, ‘Finale’ The happiest women, like the…
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Illustration for Adam Bede, novel by George Eliot (1819-1880), engraving
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Full text Article GEORGE ELIOT

From Great Victorian Lives: An Era in Obituaries
A great English writer has suddenly passed away. ‘George Eliot,’ to give her the name by which Mrs. Cross was known wherever the English language is spoken or English literature is prized, died on Wednesday evening, after only three days’ illness. On Sunday evening last she received the visits of…
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Full text Article Eliot, George

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
English novelist. Her works include the pastoral Adam Bede (1859); The Mill on the Floss (1860), with its autobiographical elements; Silas Marner (1861), containing elements of the folk tale; and Daniel Deronda (1876). Middlemarch , published serially (1871–72), is considered her greatest novel for…
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Full text Article George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 1819–80

From The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
English novelist. On Eliot: see gaskell Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. Adam Bede (1859) ch. 29 He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Adam Bede (1859) ch. 33 The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food—it seems for a moment…
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Full text Article Eliot, George (1819–80).

From The Oxford Companion to British History
Novelist whose real name was Mary Anne (later Marian) Evans. Born in Warwickshire, she was the daughter of a land agent whose moral qualities are reflected in those of the upright Adam Bede . The landscapes and rhythms of daily life in the (fictionalized) towns of the English midlands are reflected…
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Full text Article Eliot, George

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
pseudonym of Mary Ann Marian Evans 1819-80 English writer She was born on Arbury Farm in Astley, Warwickshire. Her father, Robert Evans, a Warwickshire land agent, was a man of strong character, and many of his traits were transferred by Eliot to her characters Adam Bede and Caleb Garth. She lost…
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