George Eliot

His life was emotionally closed off from the world, until an orphaned baby showed up at his house. (imdb)

Silas Marner takes care of a dying friend while William Dane steals the dying man's money and leaves evidence to incriminate Silas. Found guilty of the crime, Silas restores the money out of his own savings, but is shunned by the townsfolk. Years later he is a bitter miser, but regains his good heart with a help of a homeless child. (imdb)

When a respectable weaver is wrongfully accused of theft, he becomes a virtual hermit until his own fortune is stolen and an orphaned child is found on his doorstep. (imdb)

This Masterpiece Theatre production, set at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, chronicles the life, loves, foibles and politics of the fictional English town of Middlemarch... (imdb)

Lawyer Wakem takes away the mill on the river Floss from Edward Tulliver, whose ancestors owned it for 300 years, and becomes the worst enemy of Tulliver's family. (imdb)

After having been wrongly accused of murder and robbery, a heretofore kindly and gregarious weaver becomes a nasty, bitter, lonely old miser. (imdb)

Romeo and Juliet in 1930s England. The owner of the mill and the local lord are in conflict over water rights. The lord wins threatening the mill owner with financial ruin. (imdb)

In Renaissance Florence, Tito, a no-good young man pretending to be a scholar, wins the admiration of a blind man who has long looked for someone to finish his scholarly work. He has a beautiful daughter named Romola. Tito flirts with a peasant girl in the streets, and for fun goes through a mock marriage with her -- but she takes it seriously. Romola doesn't really love him, but marries him because her father wishes it. (imdb)