Novels 1857-1876

In Adam Bede (1859), as elsewhere, Mary Ann writes about the lives of people she had encountered in her younger years. She was the first writer to faithfully replay the Midlands voices that she had grown up with:

"NOTWITHSTANDING Mr Craig's prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed itself without having produced the threatened consequences. 'The weather,' as he observed the next morning - 'the weather, you see, 's a ticklish thing, an' a fool 'ull hit on 't sometimes when a wise man misses; that's why th' almanecks gets so much credit. It's one o' them chancy things as fools thrive on.' "