Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since and is used in university studies of 19th-century English literature.Plot summaryAccording to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967),"the plot is founded on a story told to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison."The story's plot follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope-a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love "rectangle" among beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel; Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her; Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor; and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher.Adam is a local carpenter much admired for his integrity and intelligence, in love with Hetty. She is attracted to Arthur, the local squire's charming grandson and heir, and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur agrees to give up Hetty and leaves Hayslope to return to his militia....Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Ann or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-63), Middlemarch (1871-72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of which are set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, thus avoiding the scandal that would have arisen because of her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.Eliot's Middlemarch has been described by the novelists Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language....Hetty Sorrel is a major character in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede (1859).Beautiful but thoughtless Hetty lives in the fictional community of Hayslope - a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. Her home is on Mr. Martin Poyser's dairy farm as she is his niece. Because she is an extremely pretty girl, she is admired by Mr. Craig and Adam Bede as well as Captain Arthur Donnithorne. Aside from her great physical beauty, George Eliot takes care to make it clear that she does not have many attractive personal qualities. She is spoiled, cold, insensitive, indifferent to other people's problems, and almost comically vain and selfish.