The Mill on the Floss

george eliot

'If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?'

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother, a close friend who is also the son of her family's worst enemy, and a charismatic but dangerous suitor. With its poignant portrayal of sibling relationships, The Mill on the Floss is considered George Eliot's most autobiographical novel; it is also one of her most powerful and moving.

In this edition writer and critic A.S. Byatt provides full explanatory notes and an introduction relating Mill on the Floss to George Eliot's own life and times.

Edited with an introduction and notes by A.S. BYATT

Genres classicsfiction19th centuryvictorianliteraturehistorical fictionbritish literaturenovelsclassic literatureenglish literature

579 pages, Paperback

First published April 4,1860

Places

st. oggs,

This edition

Format: 579 pages, Paperback
Published: April 29, 2003 by Penguin Classics
ISBN: 9780141439624
ASIN: 0141439629
Language: English

Characters More characters

Maggie Tulliver

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Tom Tulliver

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About the author

george eliot

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.