The Mill on the Floss

[Maggie’s] one of those great literary heroines whom bookish girls grow up wanting to be. Just like Anne of Green Gables or even Jane Eyre, Maggie captures exactly the dilemma of being the clever girl of the familyGuardian

As one comes back to [Eliot’s] books after years of absence they pour out, even against our expectations, the same store of energy and heat, so that we want more than anything to idle in the warmthVirginia Woolf