Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1861. First edition of Eliot's third novel, widley praised as her greatest in the preferred Carter's binding "A." Octavo, original embossed russet cloth (Carter's binding "A") with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, recased, pale yellow endpapers, Blackwood and Carlyle advertisements at rear which only appear in some copies. In very good condition. A nice example. "The finest of [Eliot's] studies of humble rural life" (Stanford Companion, 211). "Overwhelming are the glorious qualities which make [Eliot] a supreme novelist in an age of great novelists: her penetrating sympathy, her deep knowledge of humanity, her descriptive power, her lambent humor, the reflection of her extraordinary mind" (Kunitz and Haycraft).