These stories, first published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857, constitute George Eliot's fictional debut. They contain her earliest studies of what became enduring themes in her great novels: the impact of religious controversy and social i change on provincial life and the power of love to transform the lives of individual men and women. Although Eliot would have to wait until the publication of her next work, Adam Bede, for fame and fortune, Scenes of Clerical Life won acclaim from a discerning readership, including Charles Dickens, who wrote: "I hope you will excuse my writing to you to express my admiration.... The exquisite truth and delicacy, both of the humour and the pathos of those stories, I have never seen the like of." This Penguin Classics edition also features "How I Came to Write Fiction, " Eliot's own recollection of her novelistic abilities.
