Middlemarch: Penguin Drop Caps

Penguin Drop Caps collect twenty-six stunning hardcovers-one for each letter of the alphabet-featuring cover art by lettering superstar Jessica Hische.

It all begins with a letter. Penguin Drop Caps is a series of twenty-six collectable hardcover editions, each featuring a specially commissioned illustrated letter of the alphabet by type designer Jessica Hische. A collaboration between Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, whose series design encompasses a rainbow-hued spectrum across all twenty-six book spines, Penguin Drop Caps debuted with an ‘A’ for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a ‘B’ for Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and a ‘C’ for Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, and now continues with a ‘D’ for Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, an ‘E’ for George Eliot’s Middlemarch , and an ‘F’ for Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

E is for Eliot. It was George Eliot’s ambition to create a world and portray a whole community-tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry-in the rising fictional provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character and in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community.