Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-272) and index
'Pleasure like a tragedy': imagination and the material world -- Fit and misfitting: anthropomorphism and the natural order -- Analogy, metaphor and narrative in The origin -- Darwinian myths -- George Eliot: Middlemarch -- George Eliot: Daniel Deronda and the idea of a future life -- Descent and sexual selection: women in narrative -- Finding a scale for the human: plot and writing in Hardy's novels