George Eliot

Hetty Sorrel is loved by Adam Bede but she is in love with a young squire who seduces her and by whom she has a child. Hetty kills the child by abandoning it in a field and is tried and sentenced to death for murder.

One of the greatest English authors of the 19th Century, George Eliot is renowned for her realistic storytelling and insight into the human psyche. This BBC Radio collection presents dramatisations of her five most famous novels, as well as an exploration of her life through her fictional characters.

Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom are very close but, as she grows into womanhood, she comes into conflict with his bourgeois standards and the result is tragedy.

In the quiet world of rural English clergy, lives are full of challenges, conflicts, desires and expectations. George Eliot's first published work of fiction (1857) comprises three separate stories and has the hallmarks of her famous later works-her gentle wit and clever satire, her psychological insight, and her keen observation of human nature and frailty. These are beautifully written and poignant tales, set in and around the fictional Midlands town of Milby.

Reverend Amos Barton has a tough time as the new curate in Shepperton, in "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton"; in "Mr Gilfil's Love Story," Maynard Gilfil is in love with an Italian orphan called Tina, who becomes the central focus of the story; and in "Janet's Repentance," Edgar Tryan, an evangelical, helps Janet to overcome the abuse of her husband.

When a lonely linen-weaver's gold is stolen from his cottage, nothing consoles him until the arrival of a young child changes his life.