<DIV><p>It was George Eliot's ambition to create a world and portray a whole community—tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry—in the rising fictional provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and<BR> suspense, <B>Middlemarch</B> is richer still in character and in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community.</p> </div>