Bibliography

Fulmer, Constance Marie. George Eliot: A Reference Guide. Reference Guides in Literature, edited by Joseph Katz. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1977, 247 p.

A comprehensive annotated bibliography of published critical commentary on Eliot's life and works, 1858-1971.

Biography

Cross, J. W. George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals. New York: AMS Press, 1965, 646 p.

Official biography, originally published in 1885. Cross, whom Eliot married shortly before her death, promoted the somber, sibylline image of his wife which dominated Eliot biography and ciriticism for many years.

Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968, 616 p.

The definitive biography.

Criticism

Carlisle, Janice. "The Mirror in The Mill on the Floss: Toward a Reading of Autobiography as Discourse." Studies in the Literary Imagination XXIII, No. 2 (Fall 1990): 177-96.

Studies autobiographical references found in The Mill on the Floss.

Doyle, Mary Ellen. "The Mill on the Floss." In her The Sympathetic Response: George Eliot's Fictional Rhetoric, pp. 57-91. London: Associated University Presses, 1981.

Emphasizes the character of Tom Tulliver as the "joint protagonist" of the novel, contending that "the repeated parallels and contrasts of Maggie and Tom all suggest that he is not merely her foil but is parallel to her in thematic and structural importance."

Drew, Elizabeth. "The Tragic Vision: George Eliot (1819-1880)—The Mill on the Floss." In her The Novel: A Modern Guide to Fifteen English Masterpieces, pp. 127-40. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1963.

Maintains that Eliot was the first sociological novelist, stating that "no one before George Eliot had established the close, organic relationship between the nature of the individual and the nature of the society in which the individual has developed and in which it has to function."

Emery, Laura Comer. "The Mill on the Floss." In her George Eliot's Creative Conflict: The Other Side of Silence, pp. 5-54. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Offers a neo-Freudian interpretation of the perceived underlying fantasy as applied to the characters and to Eliot.

Higdon, David Leon. "Failure of Design in The Mill on the Floss." The Journal of Narrative Technique 3, No. 3 (September 1973): 183-92.

Criticizes the ending of The Mill on the Floss, contending that no conclusion in nineteenth-century literature "has been considered less successful and less satisfactory."

Jones, R. T. "The Mill on the Floss." In his George Eliot, pp. 19-30. London: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Approves the lengthy treatment of Maggie Tulliver's childhood as important to the characterization of her as an adult.

Law, Jules. "Water Rights and the 'Crossing O' Breeds': Chiastic Exchange in The Mill on the Floss." In Rewriting the Victorians: Theory, History, and the Politics of Gender, edited by Linda M. Shires, pp. 52-69. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Politicized analysis of both the symbolic value of the river and specific references within the novel to its material function in generating steam power and agricultural technology.

Leavis, F. R. "George Eliot: The Early Phase." In his The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, pp. 42-64. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1954.

Asserts that a weakness of The Mill on the Floss is the characterization of Stephen Guest and Maggie Tulliver's attraction to him.

Liddell, Robert. "The Mill on the Floss." In his The Novels of George Eliot, pp. 51-71. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977.

Contends that The Mill on the Floss "is rushed to its conclusion" and states that the faulty development of the latter part of the book is "largely referable to the author's self-identification with the heroine."

Moldstad, David. "The Mill on the Floss and Antigone." PMLA 85, No. 3 (May 1970): 527-31.

Outlines "the conflict between the conventions of society and individual judgment" at the center of The Mill on the Floss and in Antigone.

Newton, K. M. "Memory and The Mill on the Floss." In his George Eliot: Romantic Humanist, A Study of the Philosophical Structure of her Novels, pp. 97-122. London: Macmillan, 1981.

Studies the use of memory in The Mill on the Floss as a unifying factor between past and present and as a moral authority.

Rubin, Larry. "River Imagery as a Means of Foreshadowing in The Mill on the Floss." Modern Language Notes LXXI, No. I (January 1956): 18-22.

Contends that the ending of The Mill on the Floss is alluded to throughout the novel, stating that "the author's long, deliberate preparation virtually makes the drowning artistically inevitable."

Skilton, David. Introduction to The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, pp. v-xii. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1976.

Suggests that the theme and subject of The Mill on the Floss was not unique to Eliot but was "in a sense typical of a whole phase in British intellectual and social history."

Smith, Jonathan. "The 'Wonderful Geological Story': Uniformitarianism and The Mill on the Floss." Papers on Language and Literature 27, No. 4 (1991): 430-52.

Focuses on the impact of contemporary evolutionary theory on the form and content of Eliot's novel.

Stewart, Garrett. "Transitions: The Brontes, Gaskell, Eliot, Thackeray, Hardy." In his Death Sentences: Styles of Dying in British Fiction, pp. 99-138. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Analyzes the ironic and metaphoric aspects of the double drowning in The Mill on the Floss.

Stump, Reva. "The Mill on the Floss: The Special Circumstances." In her Movement and Vision in George Eliot's Novels, pp. 67-109. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1959.

Examines the single "fairly direct line of personal positive movement which is held in constant tension by the more ponderous negative movement of a whole society."

Additional coverage of Eliot's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Gale Research: Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, 1832-1890; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 21,35, 55; DISCovering Authors; Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vols. 4, 13, 23, 41; and World Literature Criticism.