The title of this paper may appear a misnomer, for at the time it covers George Eliot did not exist. The woman who assumed that name in 1859 rose to fame on her novels of rural life, for which she drew largely on vivid recollections of childhood days spent in the Warwickshire countryside. But her acknowledged masterpiece, "Middlemarch", is a story of life in a provincial town. It was during the years she lived in Coventry that she formed many of the associations that were to influence her thinking and lay the foundations of her future work. They were years which saw great change in the social scene and it was the events taking place in the town at that time that are reflected in the pages of "Middlemarch".

This is an attempt to relate what those associations and events were and to draw a sketch of Coventry, as she knew it, based on material available in the Coventry City Libraries' Coventry and Warwickshire Collection.