The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob

The two novellas in this volume-one Gothic, the other satiric-offer dark counterpoint to the warm humanism of Eliot's novels. The Lifted Veil is the story of Latimer, a mindreader with psychic powers. His brother's fiancŽe, Bertha, is the one person whose mind remains closed to him, arousing an undeniable curiosity, until his brother dies and he and Bertha marry-when he can finally see her intentions. In Brother Jacob, David Faux is driven by self-interest and greed to create a false life for himself as a confectioner in Jamaica. To David's surprise, it is his idiot brother, Jacob, who proves to be his nemesis.

This edition includes an introduction that places the novellas within the context of modern psychology and relates them to Eliot's longer fiction.

Author Biography: George Eliot was the nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She began her literary career as a translator and later was editor of the Westminster Review. In 1857 she published Scenes of Clerical Life, the first of eight novels she would publish under the name "George Eliot."