The Mill on the Floss was begun in 1859 and finished and sent to the publisher on March 21, 1860. It was published April 4, 1860 in three volumes. It went through four editions during George Eliot's life (two in 1860, a third in 1862, and a fourth in 1878).

Following Gordon Haight's example in the Clarendon Mill on the Floss, I have prepared this text from a stereotyped edition of the novel,which was set from the plates of the 1862 edition, the last tor which Eliot made revisions. For a full account of the novel's textual history.,see the Clarendon edition (Oxford University Press, 1980), edited by Cordon S. Haight. George Eliot's original manuscript is in the British Library.

The best-known and most autobiographical of George Eliot’s novels is now available as a Norton Critical Edition. The text of The Mill on the Floss is that of the 1862 third edition, the last for which Eliot made revisions. The text has been annotated in order to assist the reader with obscure references and allusions.

"Backgrounds" includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centering on the novel’s content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), a little-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews and responses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, including those by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and John Ruskin.

Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in the twentieth century, "Criticism" includes ten of the best studies on the novel, providing the reader with both historical and critical perspective. Contributors include Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, John Kucich, Margaret Homans, and Deirdre David.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Preface

The Text of The Mill on the Floss

Backgrounds and Contemporary Reactions

  Backgrounds

Excerpts from Letters

George Eliot · Brother and Sister

  Contemporary Reactions

From Spectator, April 7, 1860

From Saturday Review, April 14, 1860

Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton to John Blackwood,

  April 14, 1860

[F. S. Dallas] · From The Times, May 19, 1860

[Dinah Mulock] · From MacmiUan’s Magazine,

  April 1861

Henry James · The Novels of George Eliot

Algernon Charles Swinburne · [The Flaw in

  The Mill on the Floss]

John Ruskin · [The Vulgarity of The Mill on the Floss]

Criticism

Leslie Stephen · [The Heroine of The Mill on the Floss]

Virginia Woolf · George Eliot

F. R. Leavis · The Early Phase

George Levine · Intelligence as Deception: The Mill

  on the Floss

U. C. Knoepflmacher · Tragedy and the Flux: The

  Mill on the Floss

Philip Fisher · [Self and Community in The Mill

  on the Floss]

Mary Jacobus · The Question of Language:

  Men of Maxims and The Mill on the Floss

John Kucich · George Eliot and Objects:

  Meaning as Matter in The Mill on the Floss

Margaret Homans · Eliot, Wordsworth,

  and the Scenes of the Sisters’ Instruction

Deirdre David · Maggie Tulliver’s Desire

Chronology

Selected Bibliography