Midlemarch is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh and penultimate novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the mortal illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her partner George Henry Lewes. During the following year Eliot resumed work, fusing together several stories into a coherent whole, and during 1871–72 the novel appeared in serial form. The first one-volume edition was published in 1874, and attracted large sales.