The Mill On The Floss

The Mill on the Floss George Eliot
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Vol. IX.
Selected by Charles William Eliot

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Bibliographic Record

Contents
Biographical Note Criticisms and Interpretations. I. By Frederic W. H. Myers II. By George Willis Cooke III. By Henry James IV. By Frederic Harrison V. By W. D. Howells VI. By Edward Dowden List ofCharacters Book I—Boy and Girl I. Outside Dorlcote Mill II. Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom III. Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom IV. Tom Is Expected V. Tom Comes Home VI. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming VII. Enter the Aunts and Uncles VIII. Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side IX. To Garum Firs X. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected XI. MaggieTries to Run away from Her Shadow XII. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home

XIII. Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life Book II—School-Time I. Tom’s “First Half” II. The Christmas Holidays III. The New Schoolfellow IV. “The Young Idea” V. Maggie’s Second Visit VI. A Love-Scene VII. The Golden Gates Are Passed Book III—The Downfall I. What Had Happened at Home II. Mrs. Tulliver’s Teraphim, orHousehold Gods III. The Family Council IV. A Vanishing Gleam V. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster VI. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife VII. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem VIII. Daylight on the Wreck IX. An Item Added to the Family Register Book IV—The Valley of Humiliation I. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet II. The Torn Nest Is Pierced bythe Thorns III. A Voice from the Past Book V—Wheat and Tares I. In the Red Deeps II. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb III. The Wavering Balance IV. Another Love-Scene V. The Cloven Tree VI. The Hard-Won Triumph VII. A Day of Reckoning Book VI—The Great Temptation I. A Duet in Paradise II. First Impressions III. Confidential Moments IV. Brother and Sister V. Showing That Tom Had Openedthe Oyster

VI. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction VII. Philip Re-enters VIII. Wakem in a New Light IX. Charity in Full-Dress X. The Spell Seems Broken XI. In the Lane XII. A Family Party XIII. Borne Along by the Tide XIV. Waking Book VII—The Final Rescue I. The Return to the Mill II. St. Ogg’s Passes Judgment III. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us IV. Maggie and LucyV. The Last Conflict Conclusion

Biographical Note
MARY ANN (or Marian) EVANS was born at Arbury farm in the parish of Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, England, on November 22, 1819. Her father was agent for the Newdigate estates in Warwickshire and Derbyshire, and her mother was his second wife. Mary Ann, the youngest of five children, went to school in the neighbouring towns of Attleborough,Nuneaton, and Coventry, and early showed exceptional intellectual as well as musical ability. Though she left school at sixteen, she continued her studies, at times under visiting masters, until she became one of the most accomplished women of her time. A picture of her youth, substantially true though intentionally altered in details, is to be found in the early years of the heroine of “The Mill onthe Floss.” In some respects, therefore, this book is to George Eliot what “David Copperfield” is to Dickens and “Pendennis” to Thackeray. From the time of her mother’s death in 1835 until her father’s in 1849 she kept house, and proved herself an excellent manager. In 1841 she and her father moved to Coventry where she came in contact with society of an intellectual type new in her experience.One result of this and of the ever-widening range of her reading was the loss of the intense if somewhat narrow evangelical faith she had hitherto held; but she retained, and later exhibited in her novels, a sympathetic understanding of religious sentiments which she no longer shared. While still at Coventry she translated from the German Strauss’s “Life of Jesus,” published in 1846. On her...