Silas Marner

Silas Marner, a linen weaver falsely accused of theft by his religious community, settles in the village of Raveloe and lives alone for fifteen years, weaving and counting the gold he hoards. One night his gold is stolen. Soon after, on New Year's Eve, a little girl with golden hair toddles into his cottage from the snow, where her mother lies dead, and Silas decides to raise her.

Published in 1861, this short novel is George Eliot's most fable-like book, a story about how love can bring a lonely man back to life, and about the secret that one of the village's leading men is keeping. It is the best introduction to Eliot before Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss.