Every day Silas works hard and every night he takes his gold out and holds the coins lovingly, counting them again and again. He has no family, no friends. Only the gold is his friend. But what if a thief comes and takes his gold away? What would Silas do then? What could comfort him for the loss of his only friend?

Silas Marner tells the vivid tale of a reclusive miser who finds redemption through the love of an abandoned child. Like many of the other works of George Eliot (the pen name of the novelist Mary Anne Evans), it makes poignantly real the folkways, charms, and perils of rural English life, while exploring universal themes – wealth and poverty, greed and love, the nature of happiness – with penetrating psychological insight.