Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Follows the fortunes of two families in nineteenth century rural England. At its core are family relationships father, daughter and step-mother, father and sons, father and step-daughter all tested and strained by the romantic entanglements that ensue. Despite its underlying seriousness, the prevailing tone is one of comedy. Gaskell vividly portrays the world of the late 1820 s and the forces of change within it, and her vision is always humane and...

First published in 1848, "Mary Barton" is a moving account of poverty and the working class by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. Set in the early 1840s in the English city of Manchester, Gaskell's first novel follows the young and beautiful Mary Barton, daughter of a factory worker, who is eventually caught up in the class struggle of her time. She attracts the attention of a wealthy mill-owner's son, Henry Carson, although she soon discovers her...

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Elizabeth Gaskell.

First published in England in 1853, this social novel by Elizabeth Gaskell received controversial reviews among readers of the Victorian era because of its candid portrayal of the "fallen woman". Ruth Hilton, an orphaned young seamstress, falls prey to the wiles of the young, wealthy and bored Henry Bellingham. The affair is short-lived when Ruth, carrying Bellingham's unborn child, is abandoned and left unemployed, homeless, and utterly without hope....

Fox Editing Classics presents this newlly edited and designed publication of Elizabeth Gaskell's short story collection. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865), while better known for her 1857 biography of Charlotte Brontë and her still-popular novels, such as Cranford (1851-1853) and Wives and Daughters (1864-1866), her literary works also included several Gothic ghost stories. Curious, if True, originally published in 1861, collects five of these...

A rural young Englishwoman experiences her first love with a worldly engineer in this tale from the beloved author of Cranford and Wives and Daughters. It is the 1840s in England, and the time has come for nineteen-year-old Paul Manning to make his own way in the world. He takes a position working for Edward Holdsworth, an engineer overseeing expansion of a railway line into the countryside. Paul's work also takes him to Hope Farm and his relatives,...

The story of Elizabeth Gaskell's novella The Moorland Cottage takes place in a modest cottage near the town of Combehurst where Mrs. Browne lives with her two children, Edward and Maggie, along with their servant, Nancy. In her description of their daily life, Gaskell mainly insists on showing how the mother unfairly favors the boy over the girl. While she overtly spoils Edward, she keeps on treating Maggie in a very harsh way, never showing her any...

Popular nineteenth-century writer Elizabeth Gaskell packed her fiction with the kind of riveting social details that keep contemporary readers and fans of historical drama glued to the page. This collection of short stories offers a comprehensive introduction to her body of work, which rivaled Dickens' in terms of popularity at the height of her career.

Originally published in Household Words and written in alternating chapters by Dickens himself and his friends Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. Advised by her doctor to have a change of scene, the elderly Sophonisba takes up lodgings in London. Immediately intrigued by the vacant 'house to let' opposite, she charges her two warring servants, Trottle and Jarber, to unearth the secret behind its seeming desertedness. Rivals...

Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch hunts, Elizabeth Gaskell's somber novella reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America. A God-fearing and honest girl, she has little to concern her in this new life. Yet as she joins her distant family, she finds jealousy and dissension are rife, and her cousins quick to point the finger at the �imposter."...