The volume's wide selection of reviews and criticism illustrates the powerful impression made by this novel from its first appearance in 1847, when even hostile readers expressed reluctant fascination, to the present day, when its qualities have repeatedly focused attention in various Marxist, feminist, structuralist, and post-structuralist critical inquiries. Among Victorian admirers represented are D.G.Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne and G.H.Lewes. Twentieth-century criticism runs from Virginia Woolf and E.M.Forster to Terry Eagleton, Margaret Homans and Hillis Miller.