Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the...

First published in 1857, The Life of Charlotte Bronte presents an intimate portrait of the celebrated author through the eyes of Elizabeth Gaskell, a personal friend of Bronte’s and fellow trailblazer of Victorian-era literature. Drawing from hundreds of Bronte’s letters, Gaskell illuminates what she described as a "wild, sad life and the beautiful character that grew out of it." Beginning with Bronte’s lonely childhood as a student at the...

Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner’s son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Mary’s dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activist...

Cranford, in 1842, is a market town in northwest England. It is a place governed by etiquette, custom and above all, an intricate network of ladies. It seems that life has always been conducted according to their social rules. For spinsters Deborah Jenkyns, the arbiter of correctness, and Matty, her dumurring sister, the town is a hub of intrigue. Handsome new doctor Frank Harrison has arrived from London; a retired Captain and his daughters move...

Based on Elizabeth Gaskell's classic Victorian love story. Independent-minded Margaret Hale moves with her parents to Milton, a manufacturing city in England's north. Compared to the bucolic south where she was raised, Milton stifles Margaret with industrial smoke and soot, and she takes an instant dislike to John Thornton, the ambitious and severe mill owner. But amid a workers₂ strike and family misfortunes, Margaret begins to reconsider her sentiments....

A darkly luminous new anthology collecting the most terrifying horror stories by renowned female authors, presenting anew these forgotten classics to the modern reader.--