Her father shunned her, sending the broken-hearted young dependent to live with a sister until she promised to reexamine her feelings. Unable to believe, she conscientiously gave up religion and stopped attending church. Through a family friend, she was exposed to Charles Hennell's 'An Inquiry into the Origins of Christianity'. Her first published work was a religious poem. Influenced by a favorite governess, she became a religious evangelical as an adolescent.

Mary Ann, the youngest child and a favorite of her father's, received a good education for a young woman of her day.

She was born in 1819 at a farmstead in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, where her father was estate manager. 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. Byatt provides full explanatory notes and an introduction relating Mill on the Floss to George Eliot's own life and times.Įdited with an introduction and notes by A.S.

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

The mill on the floss goodreads