"Daniel Deronda", George Eliot's last, great novel, was highly acclaimed on its first publication in 1876. It tells the intertwining stories of two young people seeking their paths in life: the beautiful Gwendolen Harleth, and Daniel Deronda, whose parentage is a mystery to him. The work of an authoress at the height of her powers, it is, however, much less widely read nowadays than its predecessor "Middlemarch" - partly due to its extreme length and density.This abridgement shortens the book to about 60 per cent of its original length, whilst being careful to retain its character and all elements of the plot. It aims to make this important and insightful novel more accessible to today's general reader. I'm a qualified teacher and librarian who has had seven children's books published in traditional form in the UK and USA. I've also had about sixty short stories published in British and Australian magazines.In 2012 I set up a child-friendly website, www.megamousebooks.com, to offer free children's stories, ebooks and printable puzzles. Five years later I created my second site, www.englishliteratureebooks.com, as a home for free abridged classic novels and classic poetry ebook collections. Keeping both sites going is proving a full-time job, but a very enjoyable one!
