Adam Bede

by George Eliot

Originally published by John Blackwood

Adam Bede was the first novel by English author George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, first published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since and is regularly used in university studies of 19th-century English literature. Eliot described the novel as "a country story full of the breath of cows and scent of hay".