The Mill on the Floss. by ELIOT, George - 1860: In Three Volumes.

Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1860. First edition of George Eliot's second full-length novel; the Blair copy.
This set is in Carter's variant A binding and his second state, with the inserted advertisement leaf in the first volume and with Adam Bede listed as a "seventh edition" on p. 6 of the publisher's catalogue in the third volume. According to Carter, the advertisements were a later addition and notes that "whereas B copies sometimes are without the leaves and sometimes have them, I have never found an A copy which had them," as here.
While Eliot "was writing The Mill on the Floss, relations with her supportive publisher John Blackwood had become strained. She felt he had not done enough to dispel the Liggins myth and feared, not without justification, that he was nervous about the public response to that novel now that the identity of George Eliot was widely known" (ODNB). The Mill on the Floss, however, was met immediately with both critical and commercial success "and within four days had sold 4,600 copies" (ODNB). 3 volumes, octavo. Original brown diagonal ripple-grain cloth by Burn (ticket to rear pastedown of vol. 3), titles and decorations to spines in gilt, decorative border to boards in blind, pink-yellow coated endpapers, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Housed in a custom red cloth double slipcase, the outer one with titles in gilt to spine (rubbed, light wear to corners). Armorial bookplate of J. Belton and Blairhame leather book label of noted American collector and bibliophile Natalie Knowlton Blair (1887-1951) on the front pastedowns. Hinges and spine ends neatly restored, cloth a little discoloured, a good copy. Carter A; Parrish pp. 14-15; Sadleir 816a; Wolff 2060.