Although the shortest of George Eliots novels Silas Marner is a cherished masterwork and a moving story of redemption by the one of the Victorian eras most accomplished novelists. Published in 1861, the author charts the life of the cataleptic, miserly weaver Silas Marner. Arriving in insular Raveloe after a wrongful expulsion from his Calvinist community in the north, Silas is a foreign and outcast figure, left alone to accumulate a useless fortune through his loom in the dawn of the new industrial age. His unhappy life is rendered unrecognizable when his fortune is stolen and he adopts a child Eppie. Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is a tender and affecting tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the readers attention until the last page as Eppies bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test.