Middlemarch by George Eliot (nom de plume of Mary Anne Evans)

This work, listed by some as numbering among the ten best novels ever written, is the subject for the Autumn Tuesday Class.

The book, first published in 1871, has gone through more editions than the number of excuses given for the California budget.

Middlemarch now resides in the public domain, where a number of online editions are available for download. The BBC made an adaptation for television in 1994. A new production is due out next year as a major motion picture.

Free electronic versions of the text are available from Fullbooks.com, the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center, The Farlex Free Library, and Project Gutenberg, which also provides an MP3 audio version read by the robot voice of Steven Hawking. A somewhat better commercial version is available from Amazon, read by Harriet Walter. Another edition from Blackstone Audio is read by Nadia May.

LibriVox, an opensource project, has an audio version of Middlemarch project in progress. The finished portions are indexed here.

Tape and CD versions of the work are available from the public library, as are old-fashioned, printed versions.

Most, if not all, hand-held electronic-book readers have available versions of Middlemarch. The Sony Ebook reader, for instance, offers an edition through its CONNECT Reader Software. Other electronic ebook readers offer versions as well.

A PDF version of the book is available from Planet PDF. Many e-readers--the Sony Ebook Reader, for instance--will display PDF files.