Editing Middlemarch (section)

==Historical novel==
The action of ''Middlemarch'' takes place "between September 1829 and May 1832", or 40 years before its publication in 1871–1872,{{sfnp |Steedman |2001}} a gap not so pronounced for it to be regularly labelled as a [[historical novel]]. By comparison, [[Walter Scott]]'s ''[[Waverley (novel)|Waverley]]'' (1814) – often seen as the first major historical novel – takes place some 60 years before it appears.{{sfnp |Steedman |2001}} Eliot had previously written a more obviously historical novel, ''[[Romola]]'' (1862–1863), set in 15th-century [[Florence]]. The critics Kathleen Blake and Michael York Mason argue that there has been insufficient attention given to ''Middlemarch'' "as a historical novel that evokes the past in relation to the present".<ref name="Kathleen Blake p. 309">{{harvp |Blake |1976 |p=309}}</ref>

The critic Rosemary Ashton notes that the lack of attention to this side of the novel may indicate its merits: "''Middlemarch'' is that very rare thing, a successful historical novel. In fact, it is so successful that we scarcely think of it in terms of that subgenre of fiction."{{sfnp |Steedman |2001}} For its contemporary readers, the present "was the passage of the [[Reform Act 1867|Second Reform Act]] in 1867";{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |p=310}} the agitation for the [[Reform Act 1832]] and its turbulent passage through the two [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Houses of Parliament]], which provide the structure of the novel, would have been seen as the past.<ref name="Kathleen Blake p. 309"/>

Though rarely categorised as a historical novel, ''Middlemarch''{{'}}s attention to historical detail has been noticed; in an 1873 review, [[Henry James]] recognised that Eliot's "purpose was to be a generous rural historian".{{sfnp |James |1873}} Elsewhere, Eliot has been seen to adopt "the role of imaginative historian, even scientific investigator in ''Middlemarch'' and her narrator as conscious "of the historiographical questions involved in writing a social and political history of provincial life". This critic compares the novel to "a work of the ancient Greek historian [[Herodotus]]", who is often described as "The Father of History".{{sfnp |Steedman |2001}}