书名：Silas Marner 织工马南
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1310L
作者：George Eliot乔治·艾略特
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2007
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451530622
商品尺寸：10.6 x 1.3 x 17.3 cm
包装：简装
页数：208 （以实物为准）

Silas Marner《织工马南》是十九世纪英国著名女作家乔治·艾略特（George Eliot）于1861年完成的作品，该作品是艾略特基于对儿时乡村生活的回忆写成的三部小说中的一部（其余两部分别是《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》和《亚当·贝德》），描述了一个名叫西拉斯·马南的纺织工一生的坎坷经历的故事。乔治·艾略特是维多利亚时代英国三大小说家之一（狄更斯、艾略特和萨克雷），作品中她以写实的笔触，对社会现况做出毫无保留的揭露，并对当时陈腐的道德评断寄予高度的质疑。
本书为Signet Classics推出的英文原版，由Frederick R. Karl作序，Kathryn Hughes写后记。书本小巧便携，内容完整无删减。

The classic novel of hope, redemption, and the indomitable human spirit, from beloved novelist George Eliot.

In this heartwarming classic by George Eliot, a gentle linen weaver named Silas Marner is wrongly accused of a heinous theft actually committed by his best friend. Exiling himself to the rustic village of Raveloe, he becomes a lonely recluse. Ultimately, Marner finds redemption and spiritual rebirth through his unselfish love for an abandoned child who mysteriously appears one day in his isolated cottage.
 
Somber, yet hopeful, Eliot’s realistic depiction of an irretrievable past, tempered with the magical elements of myth and fairy tale, remains timeless in its understanding of human nature and has been beloved for generations.

With an Introduction by Frederick R. Karl and an Afterword by Kathryn Hughes

Review
“I think Silas Marner holds a higher place than any of the author’s works. It is more nearly a masterpiece; it has more of that simple, rounded, consummate aspect... which marks a classical work.”  —Henry James

19世纪早期的英国僻静的乡村，生活有着一成不变的模式。四季交替，对于住在大房子里的乡绅及其全家和对于住在小草屋里的村民来说都是一样的。任何新鲜和古怪的事情在像福洛这样的村庄里都会遭到猜疑。
织工西拉斯·马南就很古怪。他独自居住，没人知道分的家庭情况如果你不知道分的父母是谁你怎么能够信任他呢？他脸色苍白，眼神怪异，并且总是瞪着眼睛，因为他每天都要在织机上干很长时间的活，甚至星期天也干，而星期天他应该去教堂。他一定是魔鬼的朋友，村民们相互这么说。
可怜的西拉斯！他是一个忧伤、孤独的人，他唯独的朋友就是那些闪光的金币，那是他织布挣来的，被他藏在地板下面。但是变故总会发生，即便在瑞福洛这样安静的村庄里。乡绅的两个儿子之间有一个秘密，这导致争吵、抢夺，以及死亡。那是在一个下雪的夜晚，在离西拉斯的草屋不远的地方……

This 19th-century classic, read by Andrew Sachs, is a tale of betrayal, gold, and love, encased in the elegant symmetrical structure so popular in traditional English fiction, featuring Marner, the weaver, who is framed for theft by his best friend and becomes a recluse, focusing his strong affections only on the store of golden coins he receives in payment for his work. As usual, Chivers has produced an excellent audio presentation of a literary masterpiece. Alas, in this day and age fewer and fewer readers not enrolled in literature classes actually read the works of what are frequently referred to as “dead white males” even if, as in this case, they were actually written by a woman. 

乔治·艾略特（George Eliot），本名为玛丽·安·依文斯（Mary Anne Evens，1819—1800），英国维多利亚时代三大小说家之一，与狄更斯和萨克雷齐名。玛丽安于1819年11月22日出生在英国华里克群的一座庄园里。她不漂亮，总爱穿素色衣报。但她非常聪明，接受过良好的教育，懂法文、德文、意大利文、希腊文和拉丁文，还擅长写作，精通音乐。她还对宗教、文学和哲学颇有研究。艾略特的主要作品包括《织工马南》《米德尔马奇》和《弗罗斯河上的磨坊》。
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans Cross [1819-80]) received an ordinary education and, upon leaving school at the age of sixteen, embarked on a program of independent study to further her intellectual growth. In 1841, she moved to Coventry with her father, where the influence of “Skeptics and rationalists” swayed her from an intense religious devotion to an eventual break with the church. Her father's death in 1849 left her with a small legacy and the freedom to pursue her literary inclinations. In 1851, she became the assistant editor of the Westminster Review, a position she held for three years. In 1854 came the fated meeting with George Henry Lewes, the gifted editor of The Leader, who was to become her adviser and companion for the next twenty-four years. Her books include Scenes of Clerical Life (1857), Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1871-1872).

Frederick R. Karl, Professor of English at New York University, wrote major biographies of writers including Franz Kafka: Representative Man and George Eliot: Voice of a Century. He was the editor of the Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad and the author of Art into Life: The Craft of Literary Biography.

Kathryn Hughes, a historian and critic, was educated at Oxford University and holds a PhD in Victorian History. Her biography of George Eliot won the James Tait Black Prize and her most recent book, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, was made into a feature film by the BBC. She is a critic on the Guardian newspaper and Visiting Professor at the University of Kingston.

CHAPTER 1
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farm-houses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever—at least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers—emigrants from the town into the country—were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness.