Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda is a novel by English author George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), first published in eight instalments from February to September 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the Victorian society of her day. The work's mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with its sympathetic rendering of proto-Zionist ideas, has made it a final statement from one of the most renowned Victorian novelists. The novel has been adapted for film three times, once as a silent feature and twice for television. It has also been adapted for the stage, notably in the 1960s by the 69 Theatre Company in Manchester with Vanessa Redgrave cast as the heroine Gwendolen Harleth. The novel's plot has two strands. One is the "story of Gwendolen", which has been called "one of the masterpieces of English fiction", while the other, which is concerned with Daniel Deronda, has been described as "flat and unconvincing".