About this title: Daniel Deronda, raised by Gentiles, discovers the truth about his heritage and seeks his Jewish roots, finding that Judaism--and, particularly, Zionism--gives meaning to his life. Daniel's story intersects with that of the beautiful and spoiled Gwendolyn Harleth, who marries the jaded, depraved aristocrat Grandcourt and lives to repent her bad judgment. As the novel's moral center, Daniel provides a role model for Gwendolyn and, eventually, becomes a revered leader of the Zionist movement. DANIEL DERONDA, first published in 1876, is remarkable for its sympathetic and closely observed portrait ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Fair. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: SOME ] [ Writing: SOME ] [ Torn pages: NO ] [ Broken Seams: NO ] Publisher: Penguin Classics Pub Date: 2/1/1996 Binding: Paperback Pages: 896. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Wordsworth Classics, London
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9781853261763ISBN:1853261769
Description: Mass Market Paperback, SoftCover! 8vo., 675 pages. This book is unmarked and very good. No dust jacket as issued. A very attractive copy of this title! ISBN: 9781853261763. read more
Edition: 5th Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Viking Press, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780140430202ISBN:0140430202
Description: Good. No Dust Jacket as Issued. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" Tall. Book shows moderate wear/ spine tight, pages clean/ covers creased; small torn spot on front cover; moderate edge wear/ corners and spine hinge creased/ several pages and page tips creased. read more
Edition: 8th printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books; Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780140430202ISBN:0140430202
Description: Good. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. 903 pp.; 18 cm. First published, 1876. Good+. Tight, clean copy. Light edgewear to wraps. "As Daniel Deronda opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper-classes. And while Gwendolen loses everything and becomes trapped in an oppressive marriage, Deronda's fortunes take a different turn. After a dramatic ... read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Modern Library
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780375760136ISBN:037576013X
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 832 p. Modern Library Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE. Hardcovers, 1907. The usual ex-library treatments are present. From the 22 volume set of George Eliot's works. No jacket. The covers and spines are in good condition. Light corner and edge wear. Some of the hinges inside are cracked but no worse for the wear. The pages are clean and intact. The bindings are strong. Offered by the Antiquarian, Rare, and Collectable Books section at Better World Books. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. Join the more than 2.8 million ... read more
Description: VG+ Used, Like New in VG+ jacket. PAPERBACK, VG+/VG+, Signet Classics, 1979, 1 in. H x 7 in. L x 5 in. W, 10.1 oz. This copy has very minimal signs of use, appears to have been very lightly read, is in Excellent Condition Overall. Special Notes on this book: faint crease on lower front corner Note: expect tanning of any paperback more than a few years old, regardless of condition. read more
"Another novel it feels absurd to rate with stars.
What an exhilarating and delicious experience. The novel wasn't new to me, but it's been over 20 years since I last read it. How wonderful to be reintroduced to the complexities of Gwendolyn Harleth, the delicately tuned sadism of Henleigh Grandcourt, the benevolent conventionality of Sir Hugo Mallinger, the yearnings of Daniel Deronda. George Eliot allows everyone his or her humanity--even Grandcourt. I revere her for creating some of he most nuanced and robust characters in English literature--not just here but also in Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Silas Marner.
Oh, yeah, plot. Gwendolyn Harleth is a beautiful young women who is used to commanding the worshipful attention and obeisance of all around her. She suddenly finds herself penniless, and in spite of her reservations (and also an unsavory secret she knows), she marries the wealthy Henleigh Grandcourt, who proceeds to show her that he can go her one better in the arts of mastery. In the meantime, Daniel Deronda, an orphan raised to be a gentleman by Grandcourt's uncle, Sir Hugo Mallinger, rescues a young Jewish woman who is trying to drown herself in the Thames, and through her comes to solve the mystery of his own parentage. The themes of Jewish assimilation and separateness are just as pertinent today as in the 1870s, when Daniel Deronda was written.
As described above, Daniel Deronda may sound like just another big English novel, full of Sir So-and-Sos and money issues and orphans. But it's not just another English novel, even apart from the unusual Jewish thread. It's a whole world: above all the world of the human mind and heart."
"I loved this book and I couldn't get enough of it, which most people will think is weird. It's about a selfish girl in Victorian England who doesn't see that the rich man she's about to marry is totally cold and cruel, and a younger man with a talent for sympathy who has never learned that he's Jewish until he saves a Jewish girl from drowning herself and sets off a strange chain reaction. Most of these people are rich enough to afford the luxury of thinking long and hard about the meaning of life, but that's not always true. All the varieties and horrifying imitations of love are in here, as well as some mysticism that gets pretty boring. These are people's full, thought-out, deeply felt lives, and that's more interesting than the flirting and carriages and 1800's dresses that make it seem un-modern on the surface."
"What can't you learn from George Eliot's last, and perhaps, greatest novel. This is a multi-threaded, triple-decker Victorian tome that traces the eponymous character's self-discovery vis-a-vis his Jewish heritage, the adoration for Daniel shared by a young Jewish singer named Mirah and her brother Mordechai, and then, Gwendolen who marries a tyrannical man to support her destitute mother and sisters. Eliot's insights into human character and interpersonal relationships are worth scribbling in your diary. A professor friend described the book as anti-Semitic, and it does possess the Dickensian Jewish type known as Lapidoth (Mirah's gambler wastrel father), but ultimately, Jews and Gentiles unite humanely, and since it's a Victorian novel, maritally. Nearly 700 pages and worth every page."
"I'm giving this book five stars not because it changed my life or because it was always easy to read, but because it required me as a reader to really think about and appreciate its scope. George Eliot puts a lot of reflection and carefully crafted ideas into both her passages and dialogue and while I know that people don't really say such things to each other, I almost wish they could. And, I loved the story. I know that critics have pointed out that it's two novels in one--a disjointed story of friendship between Daniel Deronda and of the heroine Gwendolen Harleth. But to me, everything is thematically related and the friendship is a bridge that represents what the novel is about: "the conflicts and connections, differences and similarities, between two separate but related worlds--the 'Jewish' world and the 'English' world." Eliot herself even wrote that in writing the novel she "meant everything in the book to be related to everything else there."
To me, the themes of parentage/motherhood, inheritance, religion, morality, music, being English, being Jewish, marriage, art, and feminism are woven masterfully together in both Daniel and Gwendolen's lives. And both characters transform--Gwendolen becomes a better person because she emulates, almost worships, Daniel's influence on her, while Daniel's vision is enlarged by not only his Jewish friends Mordecai and Mirah, but by discovering a secret about his own past that gives him direction and purpose in his life.
I can see myself rereading this book someday and for those of you who wonder (Kiersten and Anne), it was like eating a perfectly cooked steak that was never chewy, but required some effort and attention--along with really good mashed potatoes (the English part) and buttery steamed aparagus (the Jewish part)--both tasty, but also good for you, and then it was topped off with some sort of complicated blend of flavors in a rich piece of cheesecake (the Gwendolen part). It was all really good, but now I am really full and need a nap."
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