Eliot, George

3 volumes, 8vo (200 x 120mm.), FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, PRESUMED FIRST STATE, 16-page publisher's catalogue at end of volume 3, publisher's cinnamon diagonal ripple-grain cloth, covers decorated in blind, spines gilt (Carter's variant B), Edmonds & Remnant's binder's ticket at end of volume I, collector's folding box by Zaehnsdorf for E. Joseph, some light soiling, hinges splitting, spines bumped at head and foot, corners slightly bumped

Baker & Ross A.5.1.a1; Carter, pp.110-111; Sadleir 816a; Wolff 2060

Despite G.H. Lewes’ concern that public knowledge of George Eliot’s identity would adversely affect the book’s reception, The Mill on the Floss met with both critical and commercial success. George Eliot herself had been ambivalent about the title, which was suggested to her by her publisher John Blackwood, remarking that “the Mill is not strictly on the Floss, being on its small tributary, and … the title is of rather laborious utterance” (Letters, III, p.240). As with other copies of the first edition, first printing, presumed first state identified by Baker & Ross (p.100, note 2),  this copy has the 16-page gathering of publisher’s advertisements more commonly seen in the presumed second state.