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and Sister" (1869), alittle-known sonnet sequence; and eight Victorian reviews andresponses, both published and unpublished, on the novel, includingthose by Henry James, Algernon Charles Swinurne, and John Ruskin.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.