My only merit must lie in the faithfulness with which I represent to you the humble experience of an ordinary fellow-mortal.When Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot's first novel, was published anonymously in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1857, it was immediately recognized, in the words of Saturday Review, as ‘the production of a peculiar and remarkable writer'. The first readers, including Dickens and Thackeray, were struck by its humorous irony, the truthfulness of its presentation of the lives of ordinary men and women, and its compassionate acceptance of human weakness.The three stories that make up the Scenes, ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', ‘Mr Gilfil's Love Story', and ‘Janet's Repentance', foreshadow George Eliot's major work, and their success gave her the confidence to become one of the greatest English novelists.