<p>Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is centered on the lives of the residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards?the years preceding the 1832 Reform Act. The narrative is variably considered to consist of three or four plots of unequal emphasis: the life of Dorothea Brooke; the career of Tertius Lydgate; the courtship of Mary Garth by Fred Vincy; and the disgrace of Nicholas Bulstrode. Significant themes include ...