My junior year at Brown, I was so unhappy that I dropped out. In Arizona, I met a man; and I read Middlemarch. My junior year at Brown, I was so unhappy that I dropped out. The place had begun to ...

At the beginning of “My Life in Middlemarch,’’ Rebecca Mead observes that there “are books that grow with the reader as the reader grows, like a graft to a tree.” In this blend of biography, memoir, ...

It would be very silly indeed to argue that nonfiction writers are running out of ideas; the Samuel Johnson prize shortlist, to take just one guide, grows stronger with every year that passes.

This week in the magazine, Rebecca Mead writes about George Eliot’s “Middlemarch.” (Subscribers can read the full text; others can buy access to the issue via the digital edition.) On the Book Bench, ...