Adam Bede was the first novel by Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), and was 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.

The title character, a carpenter, is in love with an unmarried woman who bears a child by another man. Although Bede tries to help her, he eventually loses her but finds happiness with someone else. Adam Bede was Eliot's first long novel.