Scenes of Clerical Life is a collection of George Eliot's first writings in fiction. The book contains three stories each set in the small town of Milby in the English Midlands. The time-frame for the stories was about 30 years prior to their first publication in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857. Each of the stories examines an aspect of religious reform and the impacts that change and differing beliefs have on the residents of Milby. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.