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StoryPDFThe Mill on the FlossGeorge Eliot

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot

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NovelEnglish

Maggie and Tom Tulliver grow up beside the family mill with contrasting temperaments and a powerful sibling attachment. Their father’s troubles alter the household’s prospects and deepen obligations. Maggie’s desire for affection and intellectual freedom repeatedly encounters expectations about loyalty, reputation, and a daughter’s proper conduct.

58 sections207,001 wordsAbout 15 h 41 min
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About The Mill on the Floss

The narrator treats childhood feeling as something that continues to shape adult judgments. Tom’s certainty and Maggie’s intensity can each express love while also causing harm. Read family disputes alongside the economic life of the mill, and notice how community memory makes past mistakes durable, narrowing the room available for a person to change or explain herself.

Reading focus

Compare the siblings’ forms of loyalty as economic loss and community judgment intensify the costs of Maggie’s desire for a wider life.

This reading edition contains 207,001 words in 58 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.

Author: George Eliot. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.

Opening excerpt

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships—laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal—are borne along to the town of St Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad-leaved…

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Contents

All sections
  1. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter I. Outside Dorlcote Mill5 min
  2. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter II. Mr Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom12 min
  3. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter III. Mr Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom25 min
  4. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter IV. Tom Is Expected10 min
  5. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter V. Tom Comes Home18 min
  6. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter VI. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming21 min
  7. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter VII. Enter the Aunts and Uncles43 min
  8. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter VIII. Mr Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side19 min
  9. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter IX. To Garum Firs26 min
  10. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter X. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected11 min
  11. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter XI. Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow22 min
  12. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter XII. Mr and Mrs Glegg at Home24 min
  13. BOOK FIRST BOY AND GIRL. — Chapter XIII. Mr Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life6 min
  14. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter I. Tom’s “First Half”37 min
  15. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter II. The Christmas Holidays14 min
  16. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter III. The New Schoolfellow11 min
  17. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter IV. “The Young Idea”20 min
  18. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter V. Maggie’s Second Visit9 min
  19. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter VI. A Love-Scene9 min
  20. BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME. — Chapter VII. The Golden Gates Are Passed12 min
  21. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter I. What Had Happened at Home12 min
  22. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter II. Mrs Tulliver’s Teraphim, or Household Gods9 min
  23. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter III. The Family Council29 min
  24. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter IV. A Vanishing Gleam7 min
  25. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter V. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster22 min
  26. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter VI. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife14 min
  27. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter VII. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem23 min
  28. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter VIII. Daylight on the Wreck15 min
  29. BOOK THIRD THE DOWNFALL. — Chapter IX. An Item Added to the Family Register11 min
  30. BOOK FOURTH THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION. — Chapter I. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet9 min
  31. BOOK FOURTH THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION. — Chapter II. The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns10 min
  32. BOOK FOURTH THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION. — Chapter III. A Voice from the Past28 min
  33. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter I. In the Red Deeps24 min
  34. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter II. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob’s Thumb33 min
  35. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter III. The Wavering Balance13 min
  36. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter IV. Another Love-Scene11 min
  37. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter V. The Cloven Tree22 min
  38. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter VI. The Hard-Won Triumph9 min
  39. BOOK FIFTH WHEAT AND TARES. — Chapter VII. A Day of Reckoning12 min
  40. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter I. A Duet in Paradise15 min
  41. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter II. First Impressions24 min
  42. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter III. Confidential Moments8 min
  43. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter IV. Brother and Sister14 min
  44. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter V. Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster8 min
  45. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter VI. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction19 min
  46. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter VII. Philip Re-enters25 min
  47. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter VIII. Wakem in a New Light13 min
  48. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter IX. Charity in Full-Dress18 min
  49. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter X. The Spell Seems Broken11 min
  50. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter XI. In the Lane12 min
  51. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter XII. A Family Party12 min
  52. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter XIII. Borne Along by the Tide25 min
  53. BOOK SIXTH THE GREAT TEMPTATION. — Chapter XIV. Waking20 min
  54. BOOK SEVENTH THE FINAL RESCUE. — Chapter I. The Return to the Mill13 min
  55. BOOK SEVENTH THE FINAL RESCUE. — Chapter II. St Ogg’s Passes Judgment17 min
  56. BOOK SEVENTH THE FINAL RESCUE. — Chapter III. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us13 min
  57. BOOK SEVENTH THE FINAL RESCUE. — Chapter IV. Maggie and Lucy13 min
  58. BOOK SEVENTH THE FINAL RESCUE. — Chapter V. The Last Conflict22 min

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This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 58 sections and 207,001 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.

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