When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to penal transportation.

Stang, The Theory of the Novel in England, p.149, refers to Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise (1846; 2d ed., Paris: Jules Hetzel, 1866).

Eliot herself invites the comparison in chapter 17 of Adam Bede, and Mario Praz applies it to all her works in his study of The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction.

[6] Immediately recognised as a significant literary work, Adam Bede has enjoyed a largely positive critical reputation since its publication.

[7] Contemporary reviewers, often influenced by nostalgia for the earlier period represented in Bede, enthusiastically praised Eliot's characterisations and realistic representations of rural life.

Charles Dickens wrote: "The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you."

(Hunter, S. 122) In fact, in early criticism, the tragedy of infanticide has often been overlooked in favour of the peaceful idyllic world and familiar personalities Eliot recreated.

[9] In 1918, a silent film adaptation entitled Adam Bede was made, directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Bransby Williams and Ivy Close.

In 1991, the BBC produced a television version of Adam Bede starring Iain Glen, Patsy Kensit, Susannah Harker, James Wilby and Julia McKenzie.

[10] In 2001, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of the novel with Katherine Igoe as Hetty, Vicki Liddelle as Dinah, Thomas Arnold and Crawford Logan as Mr Irwine.