The best-known and most autobiographical of George Eliot's novels isnow available as a Norton Critical Edition.<br /><br />The text of <em>The Mill on the Floss</em>, 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.<br /><br />"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and Sister" (1869), alittle-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews andresponses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, includingthose by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin.<br /><br />Judiciously chosen from the wealth of essays on <em>The Mill on the Floss</em>published in this century,&nbsp; "Criticism" includes ten of the best studiesof the novel, providing the reader with historical and criticalperspective.<br /><br />The contributors are Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis,George Levine, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, Philip Fisher, Mary Jacobus, JohnKucich, Margaret Homans, and Deirdre David.<br /><br />A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.