List $41.98

Written by George Eliot - Audio book performed by Carole Boyd - Abridged Fiction - Abridged by Perry Keenlyside - Produced by Nicolas Soames

6 COMPACT DISCS with 19th Century symphonic music - 5 hours - Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (June 2000)

One of the great novels of 19th century England, Middlemarch is concerned with the blighted marriage of a young idealistic woman, but also presents a vivid portrait of England during the 1830's.

Middlemarch, George Eliot's greatest novel, has been recorded by Carole Boyd, the well-established British radio actress. Though Carole is best known as Linda Snell in The Archers, the longest-running British radio soap, she is busy in many other studios, in both drama and audiobooks. A couple of years ago, she won the Talkie for the unabridged recording of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things.

Now she appears for the first time on Naxos AudioBooks in this six-CD recording - longer than other 19th century novels on the label, but extended in order to do justice to the work itself. "It is the greatest novel of the 19th century," says abridger Perry Keenleyside unequivocally.