The Mill on the Floss The Mill on the Floss The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was published by Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York. The novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years and details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, siblings growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. The river and the village are fictional. The novel begins in
Down by the Old Mill Stream and I are sweethearts the same as days of yore;<br> "Although we've been together, forty years and more. "Down by the old mill stream where I first met you,<br> "With your eyes of blue, dressed in gingham too,<br> "It was there I knew that you loved me true,<br> "You were sixteen, my village queen, by the old mill stream. In the middle section of his song "We Will All Go Together When We Go," Tom Lehrer parodied "Down By the Old Mill Stream" with a stride piano, singing the following words in reference to a nuclear holocaust: "Down by the