Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by the English author Mary Anne Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. - Middlemarch is a great Victorian novel, but like several other great Victorian novels (Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations) it is set in an earlier age. - It was first published, in installments, between 1871 and 1872, but it opens in 1829. - Middlemarch won this BBC Culture poll by a landslide: 42% of the critics polled included it in their lists.