Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological insight. Middlemarch is her masterpiece.

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.

No writer ever lived who had anything like her power of manifold, but disinterested and impartially observant sympathy. If Sophocles or Cervantes had lived in the light of our culture. George Eliot might have had a rival.