AQA (A): Non-exam assessment: Recommended text (The Mill on the Floss)
Thanks to the long-lasting influence of the Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis, the moral content of George Eliot’s fiction is still sometimes regarded as its most important attribute. In The Great Tradition (1948) he nominated Jane Austen, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Henry James as the high points in a tradition of moral seriousness in fiction that enhanced ‘awareness of the possibilities of life’. That postwar date is important. Among the new uncertainties of the Cold War, the idea that authoritative moral illumination could be found in the finest realist fiction was compellingly relevant to many readers.
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