“Will Hannah Horvath turn to George Eliot in some forthcoming episode of “Girls”? I hope so, because there is no better book to read than “Middlemarch” if you are a young woman struggling to make sense of your inchoate ambition, or trying to figure out what you want from love, or seeking to discover what the nature of commitment is, or resisting the conventional expectations of those around you. “

For Rebecca Mead’s take on the public’s response to George Eliot’s “romantic life and her looks,” check out her essay in the New Yorker, “George Eliot’s Ugly Beauty.”