(Review Date 14 April 1860)

SOURCE: "The Mill on the Floss." Saturday Review 9, no. 233 (14 April 1860): 470-71.

In the following review, the anonymous critic's qualified praise of The Mill on the Floss offers a provocative example of the contemporary response to a female novelist.

To speak the simple truth, without affectation of politeness, [Adam Bede] was thought to be too good for a woman's story. It turns out that a woman was not only able to write it, but that she did not write it by any lucky accident. The Mill on the Floss may not, perhaps, be so popular as Adam Bede, but it shows no falling off nor any exhaustion of power. We may think ourselves very fortunate to have a third female novelist not inferior to Miss Austen and Miss Bronté; and it so happens that there is much in the works of this new writer...