The early life of Marian Evans has, in many features of it, been very fully described in the story of Maggie Tulliver.  How far her own life is that of Maggie may be seen by comparing the earlier chapters in The Mill on the Floss with the “Brother and Sister.”  The incident described in the poem, of her brother leaving her in charge of the fishing-rod, is repeated in all its main features in the experiences of Maggie.  In the poem she describes an encounter with a gipsy, which again recalls Maggie’s encounter with some persons of that race.  The whole account of her childhood life with her brother, her trust in him, their delight in the common pleasures of childhood, and the impression made on her by the beauties of nature, reappears in striking similarity in the description of the child-life of Maggie and Tom.  These elements of her early experience and observation of life have been well described by one who knew her personally.  This person says that “Maggie Tulliver’s childhood is clearly full of the most accurate personal recollections.”

Marian Evans very early became an enthusiastic reader of the best books.  In an almanac she found a portion of one of the essays of Charles Lamb, and remembered reading it with great delight.  In her seventh year a copy of Waverley was loaned to her older sister.  She became herself intensely fascinated by it, and when it was returned before she had completed it she was thrown into much distress.  The story so possessed her that she began to complete it in writing, according to her own conception.  When this was discovered, the book was again secured for her perusal.  This incident she has described in a sonnet, which appears as the motto to the fifty-seventh chapter of Middlemarch.

  They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
    Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
  As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
    At penetration of the quickening air: 
  His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
    Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
  Making the little world their childhood knew
    Large with a land of mountain, lake and scaur,

  And larger yet with wonder, love, belief,
    Toward Walter Scott, who living far away
  Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. 
    The book and they must part, but day by day,
      In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran,
      They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.

Not only was she a great reader, but she was also a diligent and even a precocious student, learning easily and rapidly whatever she undertook to acquire in the way of knowledge.