George Eliot's first full-length novel, Adam Bede, is a profound rendering of 19th-century English pastoral life. This timeless story of seduction and betrayal follows the earnest carpenter Adam Bede, who has set his heart on the all-too-beautiful Hetty Sorrell. But Hetty is attracted to the fickle squire Arthur Donnithorne, whose dalliance with the young woman precipitates a series of unforeseen ...