The Mill On The Floss.

ELIOT, George.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 140537

Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1860.

First edition, first issue of Eliot’s classic work without the advertisement leaf to volume I and with the seventh edition of Adam Bede cited in the advertisements at rear of volume III. Octavo, three volumes bound in three quarter crushed dark green morocco by Sotheran & Co. with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers. In near fine condition. Bookplates.

One of the major novelists of the 19th century, George Eliot (1819-1880) was "the most extensively anthologized novelist among her contemporaries. Her writing evinces a strong belief in progress, which for her meant the gradual improvement of the world through difficult, often imperceptible human effort, sometimes characterised as meliorism. Her biographer Kathryn Hughes calls her the 'last Victorian' because she thought it possible to face the crises of her time without 'shattering in shards'" (Orlando).