“This edition of George Eliot’s most passionate novel about a woman’s life is accompanied by a selection of contemporary materials that demonstrate the surprisingly radical context of the author’s views at this point in her career. Oliver Lovesey has selected brief, eminently readable portions from Eliot’s own translations, essays, and reviews that will educate the reader in the ‘real’ George ... Read moreEliot—a woman of amazing education herself, and of profoundly original thought that transcended the conventions of her time. The edition also includes the full text of the author’s poem, ‘Brother and Sister,’ a parallel narrative of Eliot’s childhood that is crucial to the reader’s understanding of the novel, as well as other very useful selections from historical documents and contemporary reviews of the novel.” — Mary Wilson Carpenter, Queen’s University “This edition is a splendid presentation of George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. The long and generous introduction dispels some of the myths about the author’s life, traces subtle relations between the novel and the moral complexities Eliot faced in Victorian society, places the novel in the context of her life’s work, and offers valuable analyses of the novel’s style and structure. Footnotes throughout the text helpfully explain dialect words, obsolete expressions and literary allusions. Excerpts from George Eliot’s critical writings, added as appendices, give insight into some of the ideas about fiction, religion, and the place of women in society that entered into the writing of The Mill on the Floss.” — Jacob Korg, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington Show Less