The Mill on the Floss

First published in April 1860, The Mill on the Floss follows Maggie Tulliver, a passionate and imaginative young woman growing up beside the River Floss in the English Midlands. Her close but often difficult relationship with her brother Tom lies at the heart of the novel, as family loyalty, financial ruin and the rigid expectations of provincial society shape their lives. Maggie’s hunger for affection, knowledge and independence brings her into conflict with the world around her, particularly as she struggles to reconcile her own desires with the duties and loyalties that bind her to others.

Drawing deeply on Eliot’s childhood memories, the novel is a moving study of sibling devotion, moral responsibility, female constraint and the lasting power of early experience. Its evocation of rural English life is matched by an extraordinary psychological understanding of the private conflicts that lie beneath ordinary family existence. Among Eliot’s most personal works, The Mill on the Floss combines the breadth of the Victorian social novel with an intimate portrait of a young woman whose longing for a fuller life is never easily accommodated by the world she inhabits.

From the book

“I desire no future that will break the ties of the past.”

— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

On The Mill on the Floss

“The Mill on the Floss may not, perhaps, be so popular as Adam Bede, but it shows no falling off nor any exhaustion of power.”

— The Saturday Review, 14 April 1860