Adam Bede was the first novel by English author George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, first published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time. The novel has remained in print ever since and is regularly used in university studies of 19th-century English literature. Eliot described the novel as “a country story full of the breath of cows and scent of hay”