Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Ann or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-63), Middlemarch (1871-72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of which are set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, thus avoiding the scandal that would have arisen because of her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.Eliot's Middlemarch has been described by the novelists Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language...........The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was published by Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York.Plot summaryThe novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years and details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, siblings growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. The river and the village are fictionalThe novel begins in the late 1820s or early 1830s - several historical references place the events in the book after the Napoleonic Wars but before the Reform Act of 1832.[2] (In chapter 3, the character Mr Riley is described as an "auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago," placing the opening events of the novel in approximately 1829, thirty years before the novel's composition in 1859. In chapter 8, Mr Tulliver and Mr Deane discuss the Duke of Wellington and his "conduct in the Catholic Question," a conversation that could only take place after 1828, when Wellington became Prime Minister and supported a bill for Catholic Emancipation). The novel includes autobiographical elements and reflects[citation needed] the disgrace that George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) experienced while in a lengthy relationship with a married man, [citation needed] George Henry Lewes.Maggie Tulliver is the protagonist and the story begins when she is 9 years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem (a hunchbacked, sensitive and intellectual friend) and with Stephen Guest (a vivacious young socialite in St Ogg's and assumed fiancé of Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane) constitute the most significant narrative threads.Tom and Maggie have a close yet complex bond, which continues throughout the novel. Their relationship is coloured by Maggie's desire to recapture the unconditional love of her father before his death. Tom's pragmatic and reserved nature clashes with Maggie's idealism and fervor for intellectual gains and experience. Various family crises, including bankruptcy, Mr Tulliver's rancorous relationship with Philip Wakem's father, which results in the loss of the mill and Mr Tulliver's untimely death, intensify Tom's and Maggie's differences and highlight their love for each other. To help his father repay his debts, Tom leaves school to enter a life of business. He eventually finds a measure of success, restoring the family's former estate. Maggie languishes in the impoverished Tulliver home, her intellectual aptitude wasted in her socially isolated state....