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During which period of British political reform is Felix Holt, the Radical set?
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George Eliot
George Eliot, engraving derived from a chalk drawing (1865) by Sir Frederic William Burton.
Felix Holt, the Radical is set in England during the early 1830s, a period defined by the intense political agitation surrounding the passage of the first Reform Bill.12
This legislative measure was designed to reform the British electoral system by redistributing voting privileges from small, controlled boroughs to the rapidly growing industrial towns. The novel captures the social and political climate of this era, drawing on George Eliot's own recollections of election-related unrest, such as a riot she witnessed in Nuneaton in December 1832.132