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. Both the river and the village are fictional. The novel is initially set in the late 1820s or early 1830s - a number of historical references place the events in the book after the Napoleonic Wars but before the Reform Act of 1832. (In chapter 3, the character Mr. Riley is described as an "auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago," placing the opening events of the novel in approximately 1829, thirty years before the novel's composition in 1859.