The Secret Life of Books Series 2
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- Episode
- The Mill on the Floss
- Broadcast Info
- 2015 (29 mins)
- Description
- Published in 1860, The Mill on the Floss was George Eliot’s 3rd novel and also her most autobiographical. Its focus was a young woman’s struggle for intellectual fulfilment, her forbidden love and the ruptured relationship between a sister and brother. Much of the plot had parallels to the author’s own life. In this documentary, actor and devoted Eliot fan Fiona Shaw goes in search of the roots of one of English literature’s greatest novels.
Her journey begins at Arbury Hall in Warwickshire. It was near here that Mary Ann Evans (Eliot’s real name) was born and developed her literary appetite. Her best friend growing up was her brother Isaac. Yet as adults they became estranged. He was unwilling to accept her unconventional relationship with the critic and philosopher George Henry Lewes. Being shunned by her brother was the tragedy that motivated so much of The Mill on the Floss and its focus on the fractured relationship between Tom and Maggie Tulliver.
In the British Library Shaw examines Eliot’s only surviving hand-written manuscript with Dr Sandra Tuppen. She discovers a strikingly neat set of volumes with little corrections except from subtle indications in the author’s handwriting which reveal the true extent of the emotional toll of the book’s denouement on its writer.
In further interviews with Eliot biographer Kathryn Hughes and expert Rosemary Ashton, Shaw digs deep into both the life of Eliot herself and how this shaped the book and also the powerful influence on Eliot’s work of the German writer Goethe. Along the way we visit the house in South London in which much of the novel was written and some of the actual locations near Nuneaton which feature in the book.
Throughout, Shaw argues with great passion that in Maggie Tulliver, Eliot had created one of English fictions most powerful female protagonists. - Genre
- Arts; Literature; Writing; History
How to cite this record
The Open University, "The Secret Life of Books Series 2". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/219311 (Accessed 24 Nov 2025)