Middlemarch first appeared in instalments in 1871 and 1872. By this time George Eliot was an accomplished novelist and this is generally acknowledged to be her masterpiece. She set the novel in time some 40 years earlier but she many aspects of contemporary life in the mid-Victorian period. Human relationships are at the core of the novel but art, religion, science, politics and social development are themes which interweave the character's lives. Around the central character, Dorothea Brooke, revolve some of the best-drawn portraits in English literature.