The Book that Changed My Life: 'Middlemarch' and 'The Little Witch'

Laura Burden 

Middlemarch by George Eliot (with a nod to Postman Pat and the Mystery Thief):

Yes, it’s a cliche - I’m Head of English and Middlemarch was one of my own A Level texts in 2000, although I’ve never taught it to a class - syllabuses these days do not focus on heavy, sprawling tomes. Yet it is the novel I find myself returning to. For those who have not yet read it, Middlemarch is subtitled A Study of Provincial Life and centres upon the life of a market town in the Midlands. It’s an extraordinary book because it represents ordinary doings simply and vividly. Written in the early 1870s but set in 1829-1832, it is a post-Darwinian novel looking back at a pre-Darwinian age; written after so much change has taken place across the nineteenth century, it depicts a community on the cusp of change. The railway arrives and, in the process, the traditional divisions of urban versus rural and court versus countryside are blurred and broken down forever. In Middlemarch, characters tend to begin with good, even noble, intentions, yet rarely achieve their aims completely. It has been said that Middlemarch is a novel of failed idealism, but it might be more accurate to call it an exploration of what replaces youthful idealism. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), the author, was a Land Agent’s daughter and it is perhaps not a surprise that she writes incisively about estate owners, tradesmen and peasants equally vividly. I have enjoyed returning to it this year with a Year 13 IB pupil for her Extended Essay.

However, reading begins early and it is possible that the book that changed my life is one I can’t remember. My parents read to me as a baby and a toddler, day in and day out, despite both holding down jobs. They tell me that my favourite at the time was Postman Pat and the Mystery Thief but, whatever it was, I am grateful for their efforts. Without their early love and care, I don’t know where I’d be in life but I certainly wouldn’t have written my MA dissertation on seven-part publication in Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch.

Miranda Worley

The book that changed my reading life is The Little Witch by Otfried Preussler

This book is important to me because I remember it was the first one that I chose to buy myself and read independently - and not because someone else had told me to.  I remember seeing it in a book club catalogue and saving my pocket money for several weeks back in the early 1970s to pay the enormous sum of 45p for the book.  I guess I must have just started junior school and up until then the books that I had read had not belonged to me, but to my parents or the school.  I think initially the raven and the stockings on the front cover caught my imagination.  

When I look at this book now, all water stained and a bit ripped and yellowed, I can still remember the excitement of opening a brand-new book, the creak of the spine as I bent it back for the first time, the smell of the newly printed paper.  I remember reading the first chapter before the end of the lunchbreak, and the desire to get back to it all afternoon in lessons.  I devoured it over the weekend, curled up in an enormous chair my parents had on the landing. I was hooked.  

I guess it doesn't really matter what your first hook into reading is, as long as it happens.