Novels such as Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss refect Eliot's complex and sometimes contradictory ideas about society, the artist, the role of women, and the interplay of science and religion. Tim Dolin examines Eliot's life and work and the social and intellectual contexts in which they developed. He also explores the ways in which 'George Eliot' has been recontextualized for modern readers and television viewers. - ;In a landmark essay, Virginia Woolf rescued George Eliot from almost four decades of indifference and scorn when she wrote of the 'searching power and reflective richness'