About this item
Raised in the idyllic setting of Dorlcote Mill, the wild and wilful Maggie Tulliver adores her elder brother Tom and is forever trying to gain the approbation of her parents. Yet, as she grows older and the family struggle under the weight of severe pecuniary difficulties, she becomes increasingly caught between the divergent expectations of the four men in her life: a doting father, an obdurate and vengeful brother, a good-looking and frivolous suitor and an earnest old playmate who happens to be the son of her father and brother's sworn enemy.Tragic and affecting, and drawing heavily on George Eliot's own rural upbringing and relationship with her brother, The Mill on the Floss is one of literature's finest evocations of childhood and adolescence, and introduces, in Maggie Tulliver, one of the most beloved heroines in the English canon.
About the Author
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880; alternatively "Mary Anne" or "Marian") , 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 is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859) , The Mill on the Floss (1860) , Silas Marner (1861) , Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) , Middlemarch (1871-72) , and Daniel Deronda (1876) , most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. She also wished to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.Her 1872 work Middlemarch has been described by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Swiss artist Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade (1804-86) [Public Domain], via English Wikipedia.
