A resource for writing about Middlemarch

Middlemarch -- maybe you already noticed this -- Middlemarch is a fairly long book. If you are trying to track down a specific event or description or word in the novel, it can take you a hell of a lot of page-flipping to actually find what you're looking for, even if you've already underlined it.

Here's how I deal with this problem of finding textual detail in a massive text: the Middlemarch etext. Just search the text from your web browser and you can come across, say, every instance of the phrase "poor Dorothea" (thanks to Leigh Ann for the example). You can also use it to figure out exactly what chapter has that bit where Raffles asks Will about his mother, or whatever scene you end up needing for your own argument.

There are hundreds of etexts at Gutenberg.org, although the other texts we have read are sufficiently short that you might not need electronic versions thereof. Here, anyway, are The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Heart of Darkness, and Dubliners (with "Araby" and "The Dead").