quot;The Thirtynine George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2010 The
By late 1859, when she had almost finished writing The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot was still unsure of its final title. The working title was ''Sister Maggie'', which was particularly appropriate to the first two thirds of the novel, where interest is concentrated on the pleasures and pains of the childhood relationship between Tom and Maggie Tulliver.