The Mill on the Floss (Norton Critical Editions)

by Eliot, George; Christ, Carol T.

• ISBN13: 9780393963328
• ISBN10: 0393963322
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-11-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

The text of The Mill on the Floss , that of the 1862 third edition forwhich Eliot made her last revisions, has been annotated in order toassist the reader with obscure references and allusions. "Backgrounds" includes fifteen letters from the 1859-69 period centeringon the novel's content and composition; "Brother and Sister" (1869), alittle-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews andresponses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, includingthose by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin. Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on The Mill on the Floss published in this century, "Criticism" includes ten of the best studiesof the novel, providing the reader with historical and criticalperspective. The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis,George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, JohnKucich, Margaret Homans, and Deirdre David. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
The Text of The Mill on the Floss	1	(424)
Backgrounds and Contemporary Reactions	425	(44)
Backgrounds	427	(14)
Excerpts from Letters	427	(7)
Brother and Sister	434	(7)
George Eloit
Contemporary Reactions	441	(28)
From Spectator, April 7, 1860	441	(3)
From Saturday Review, April 14, 1860	444	(4)
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton to John Blackwood, April 14, 1860	448	(3)
From The Times, May 19, 1860	451	(7)
E. S. Dallas
From Macmillan's Magazine, April 1861	458	(6)
Dinah Mulock
The Nevels of George Eliot	464	(2)
Henry James
The Flaw in The Mill on the Floss	466	(1)
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Vulgarity of The Mill on the Floss	467	(2)
John Ruskin
Criticism	469	(142)
The Heroine of The Mill on the Floss	471	(9)
Leslie Stephen
George Eliot	480	(3)
Virginia Woolf
The Early Phase	483	(6)
F. R. Leavis
Intelligence as Deception: The Mill on the Floss	489	(13)
George Levine
Tragedy and the Flux: The Mill on the Floss	502	(18)
U. C. Knoepflmacher
Self and Community in The Mill on the Floss	520	(23)
Philip Fisher
The Question of Language: Men of Maxims and The Mill on the Floss	543	(14)
Mary Jacobus
George Eliot and Objects: Meaning as Matter in The Mill on the Floss	557	(19)
John Kucich
Eliot, Wordsworth, and the Scenes of the Sisters' Instruction	576	(19)
Margaret Homans
Maggie Tulliver's Desire	595	(16)
Deirdre David
Chronology	611	(2)
Selected Bibliography	613