The Old Nurse's Story

'Even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon the window-glass...' 
 
A phantom child roams the Northumberland moors, while a host of fairytale characters gone to seed gather in the dark, dark woods in these two surprising tales of the uncanny from the great Victorian novelist. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865). Gaskell's works available in Penguin Classics are Cranford, Cranford and Cousin Phillis, Gothic Tales, Mary Barton, North and South, Ruth, Sylvia's Lovers, The Life of Charlotte Brontë and Wives and Daughters.

Wives and Daughters

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The Penguin English Library Edition of Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell 
 
"Eh, miss, but that be a rare young lady! She do have such pretty coaxing ways ..." 
 
Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly's life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is some solace in the shape of her new stepsister Cynthia, who is beautiful, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. Soon the girls become close, and Molly finds herself cajoled into becoming a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs. But in doing so, Molly risks ruining her reputation in the gossiping village of Hollingford - and jeopardizing everything with the man she is secretly in love with. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) moved from the London of her childhood to Knutsford and later Manchester, and her experience of the differences between North and South deeply informed her writing. Writer of six novels, numerous shorter works and the biography of her great friend Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell was at first published anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household Words. 
 
Gaskell's other novels Mary Barton, Cranford and North and South are also published in the Penguin English Library.

Mary Barton

"The rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don't know, they ought to know. We're their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds" 
 
Mary Barton, the heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, is beautiful but has been born poor. Her father fights for the rights of his fellow workers, but Mary wants to make a better life for them both. She rashly decides to reject her lover Jem, a struggling engineer, in the hope of marrying the rich mill-owner's son Henry Carson and securing a safe future. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself hopelessly torn between them. She also discovers an unpleasant truth - one that could bring tragedy upon everyone, and threatens to destroy her. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) moved from the London of her childhood to Knutsford and later Manchester, and her experience of the differences between North and South deeply informed her writing. Writer of six novels, numerous shorter works and the biography of her great friend Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell was at first published anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household Words. Mary Barton was Gaskell's first novel, and deals with many of the great social and political themes that came to be so distinctive of her work. 
 
Gaskell's other novels Cranford, North and South and Wives and Daughters are also published in the Penguin English Library.

Cranford

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) moved from the London of her childhood to Knutsford, on which the fictional town of Cranford is modelled, and later Manchester. Writer of six novels, numerous shorter works and the biography of her great friend Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell was at first published anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household Words. 
 
Gaskell's other novels Mary Barton, North and South and Wives and Daughters are also published in the Penguin English Library.

With an essay by Anna Unsworth. 
 
'Just at this moment he passed us on the stairs, making such a graceful bow, in reply to which I dropped a curtsey - all foreigners have such polite manners, one catches something of it' 
 
Cranford is an affectionate and often moving portrait of genteel poverty and intertwined lives in a nineteenth-century village. One of Elizabeth Gaskell's most beloved works, it centres on a community dominated by women and governed by old-fashioned ways. The formidable Miss Deborah Jenkyns and the kindly Miss Matty's days revolve around card games, tea, thriftiness and an endless appetite for scandal, until change comes into their world - whether it is the modern ideas of Captain Brown, a bank collapse, rumours of burglars or an unexpected reappearance from the past. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) herself moved from South to North in her youth, from the London of her childhood to Knutsford and later Manchester. Writer of six novels, numerous short stories and novellas and the biography of her great friend Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell was at first published anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household Words. 
 
Gaskell's novels Mary Barton, Cranford and Wives and Daughters are also published in the Penguin English Library.

The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 
 
'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?' 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, she develops a passionate sense of social justice, and a turbulent relationship with mill-owner John Thornton. North and South depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal of what divides people, and what brings them together. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Stop What You’re Doing and Read…To Warm You in Cold Weather: Little Women And Good Wives & The Cranford Chronicles

LITTLE WOMEN (AND GOOD WIVES) &amp; THE CRANFORD CHRONICLES: A selection of heart-warming tales to comfort and console throughout the winter months.

Little Women deals with life's big questions - love and death, war and peace, and ambition versus family responsibility - in a way that is inspiring and realistic. Use a hankie as a bookmark - tears are guaranteed

THE CRANFORD CHRONICLES - Pah! to Dickens. Eat your heart out, Little Nell. That Elizabeth Gaskell could write a death scene to make your socks melt

Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832 in Pennsylvania. Her father was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. Alcott started selling stories in order to help provide financial support for her family. Her first book was Flower Fables (1854). She worked as a nurse during the American Civil War and in 1863 she published Hospital Sketches, which was based on her experiences. Little Women was published in 1868 and was based on her life growing up with her three sisters. She followed it with three sequels, Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886) and she also wrote other books for both children and adults. Louisa May Alcott was an abolitionist and a campaigner for women's rights. She died on 6 March 1888. 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell was born on 29 September 1810 in London. She was brought up in Knutsford, Cheshire by her aunt after her mother died when she was two years old. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister like her father. After their marriage they lived in Manchester with their children. Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 to great success. She went on to publish much of her work in Charles Dickens's magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round. Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Brontë, she published five more novels including North and South (1855) and Wives and Daughters (1866). Wives and Daughters is unfinished as Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865.

To mark the publication of Stop What You're Doing and Read This!, a collection of essays celebrating reading, Vintage Classics are releasing 12 limited edition themed ebook 'bundles', to tempt readers to discover and rediscover great books. 
 
LITTLE WOMEN &amp; GOOD WIVES 
Life in the March household is full of adventures and accidents as the four very different March sisters follow their varying paths to adulthood, always maintaining the special bond between them. Sensible Meg, impetuous Jo, shy Beth and artistic Amy each have to confront different challenges as they grow up together and attempt to learn how to be both happy and good. 
 
THE CRANFORD CHRONICLES 
Follow the small absurdities and major tragedies in the lives of the people of Cranford, a small Cheshire market town, during one extraordinary year. 
The railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards the town from Manchester, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order. The arrival of handsome young Doctor Harrison causes yet further agitation not just because of his revolutionary methods but also because of his effect on the hearts of the ladies. Meanwhile Miss Matty's memories of long-ago heartache are rekindled.

September 2010 is the bicentenary of Gaskell's birth. This tender story of parents, children and step-children, mistakes and secrets was Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel and is considered her masterpiece.

She was a pioneer, multi-tasking mother... Gaskell's work will always be one of the adornments of liberal Britain

My dear Scheherazade...I am sure your powers of narrative can never be exhausted in a single night, but must be good for at least a thousand nights and one

Her stories are wonderfully funny, but the ridiculous is bathed in a poignant, dreamlike mood found nowhere else in fiction, and profound ideas and strong values sleep beneath everyday details of bonnets and cakes

People who read her always come away surprised at how modern she sounds. You don't have to think yourself into her century in order to sympathise, since her guiding principle was no more or less than a sense of practical, day-today justice, totally outside the abiding gentleman-lady-peasant-donkey-peasant's wife hierarchy which surrounded her

Pah! to Dickens. Eat your heart out, Little Nell. That Elizabeth Gaskell could write a death scene to make your socks melt

Elizabeth Gaskell was born on 29 September 1810 in London. She was brought up in Knutsford, Cheshire by her aunt after her mother died when she was two years old. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister like her father. After their marriage they lived in Manchester with their children. Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 to great success. She went on to publish much of her work in Charles Dickens's magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round. Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Brontë, she published five more novels including North and South (1855) and Wives and Daughters (1866). Wives and Daughters is unfinished as Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865.

This tender story of parents, children and step-children, mistakes and secrets was Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel and is considered her masterpiece. 
 
 Set in the watchful society of Hollingford, this is a warm tale of love and longing. Molly Gibson is the spirited, loyal daughter of the local doctor. Their peaceful close-knit home is turned upside down when Molly's father decides to remarry. Whilst Molly struggles to adjust to her snobbish stepmother, she forms a close relationship with her glamorous new stepsister Cynthia. The strength of this friendship is soon tested as their lives become entwined with Squire Hamley and his two sons. 
 
 ‘Gaskell's work will always be one of the adornments of liberal Britain’ Guardian

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Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Rev. William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848 and won the attention of Charles Dickens and most of her later work was publish in his journals. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote, as well as her many novels and short stories. 
 
 
Patricia Ingham is Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has written on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. she is the General Editor of all Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics and has edited Gaskell's North and South for the series.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 
 
Gaskell's best known work is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty. But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reapparance of long-lost relatives.

Lois the Witch

Part of our Gothic Classics series - ten terrifying tales of the supernatural - eerie visitations, revenge from beyond the grave, vampire love and many other macabre manifestations from masters of the genre

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Rev. William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848 and won the attention of Charles Dickens: most of her later work was publish in his journals. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote, as well as her many novels and short stories.

Fear of Satan becomes murder in the name of God. 
 
Newly orphaned, the God-fearing and heart-broken Lois is sent across the Atlantic to live with her uncle&rsquo;s family in Salem, but on her arrival she finds herself the object of cruel hostility, potent jealousy and mad desire. 
 
When the local Pastor&rsquo;s daughters are contorted and convulsed by apparently satanic powers, the whole town is whipped into a hysterical witch hunt. And when Lois&rsquo;s cousins start to resent her presence in their household, life becomes precarious and an old woman&rsquo;s curse returns to haunt her.

'A really remarkable picture of the reality, as well as the prosperity, of northern industrial life, and an interesting examination of changing social conscience' Joanna Trollope

Gaskell saw the emotional and economic realities of ordinary life with a steely honesty

Ruth, North and South and Mary Barton are at least as good as any of Dickens's novels

One of the most perceptive novels of the mid-Victorian era

North And South explores themes that still seem strikingly modern. One hundred and fifty years after it appeared, the North-South divide - and the social and economic gulf it implies - remains intact

Elizabeth Gaskell was born on 29 September 1810 in London. She was brought up in Knutsford, Cheshire by her aunt after her mother died when she was two years old. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister like her father. After their marriage they lived in Manchester with their children. Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 to great success. She went on to publish much of her work in Charles Dickens's magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round. Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Brontë, she published five more novels including North and South (1855) and Wives and Daughters (1866). Wives and Daughters is unfinished as Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865.

'A really remarkable picture of the reality, as well as the prosperity, of northern industrial life, and an interesting examination of changing social conscience' Joanna Trollope 
 
Milton is a sooty, noisy northern town centred around the cotton mills that employ most of its inhabitants. Arriving from a rural idyll in the south, Margaret Hale is initially shocked by the social unrest and poverty she finds in her new hometown. However, as she begins to befriend her neighbours, and her stormy relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton develops, she starts to see Milton in a different light. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JENNY UGLOW

'Gaskell's shocking, moving and contemporary account of the corrosive effects of injustice and poverty' Sunday Telegraph

A story of scandal, class conflict and bitter rivalry

Mary Barton is the first and arguably the finest of them. In it, early trade-union radicalism and competition between old industrial methods and new is the background to a powerful, often heartbreaking depiction of real rather than ideal Victorian family life

Elizabeth Gaskell, or Mrs Gaskell as she was known, also produced what has been called the first social novel. The living conditions she witnessed daily in her work among poor mill labourers spurred her to write a novel that would prick the social conscience of industrial Britain, while spinning a gripping yarn. It worked. "People on Turkish carpets," wrote one reviewer, "with their three meat meals a day, are wondering why working men turn Chartists and Communists. Do they want to know why? Let them read Mary Barton"

People who read her always come away surprised at how modern she sounds. You don't have to think yourself into her century in order to sympathise, since her guiding principle was no more or less than a sense of practical, day-today justice, totally outside the abiding gentleman-lady-peasant-donkey-peasant's wife hierarchy which surrounded her.

'Gaskell's shocking, moving and contemporary account of the corrosive effects of injustice and poverty' Sunday Telegraph 
 
 Mary Barton is the pretty daughter of a factory worker who finds herself dreaming of a better life when the mill-owner's charming son, Henry, starts to court her. She rejects her childhood friend Jem's affections in the hope of marrying Henry and escaping from the hard and bitter life that is the fate of the workers, who are resentfully dependent on the callous mill-owners for their livelihoods. But when Henry is shot dead in the street Jem becomes the prime suspect and Mary finds her loyalties tested to the limit.

The Cranford Chronicles

Based on three Elizabeth Gaskell novels, The Cranford Chronicles follows the small absurdities and major tragedies in the lives of the people of Cranford, a small Cheshire market town, during one extraordinary year.

Bathed in a poignant, dreamlike mood found nowhere else in fiction

In this witty and poignant story the railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards the town from Manchester, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order. The arrival of handsome young Doctor Harrison causes yet further agitation not just because of his revolutionary methods but also because of his effect on the hearts of the ladies. Meanwhile Miss Matty Jenkyns nurses her own broken heart after she was forced to give up the man she loved when she was a young girl.

The Life of Charlotte Bronte

The first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist, which was almost single-handedly responsible for creating the Bronte myth

The first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist, which was almost single-handedly responsible for creating the Brontë myth 
 
‘A classic in its own right, still read today as one of the great works of Victorian literature’ Lucasta Miller 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the sub-title ‘An Autobiography’. It recounts Charlotte Brontë’s life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had ‘foreseen the single life’ for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work – the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist – explores the nature of Charlotte’s genius and almost single-handedly created the Brontë myth. 
 
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Elisabeth Jay

ELIZABETH GASKELL was born in London in 1810. She married a minister, and her literary output was substantial and completely professional. Many of her works are available in Penguin Classics, including NORTH AND SOUTH, SYLVIA'S LOVERS, and WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. She died suddenly in 1865. 
 
ELISABETH JAY has taught and lectured at various universities in Great Britain and the USA, and is currently Head of Westminster College, Oxford. Her books include FAITH AND DOUBT IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN.

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Brontë's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work - the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist - explored the nature of Charlotte's genius and almost single-handedly created the Brontë myth.

Sylvia's Lovers

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote much social and realist fiction during the nineteenth century, having attracted the attention of Dickens when she wrote for his journal Household Works 
 
 
Shirley Foster is a Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Sheffield. She has published widely, notably on Victorian women's fiction, Edith Wharton and female travel literature. 
 
 
Shirley Foster is a Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Sheffield. She has published widely, notably on Victorian women's fiction, Edith Wharton and female travel literature.

Elizabeth Gaskell's only historical novel, Sylvia's Lovers, is set in 1790 in the seaside town of Monkshaven (Whitby) where press-gangs wreak havoc by seizing young men for service in the Napoleonic wars. One of their victims is whaling harpooner, Charley Kinraid, whose charm and vivacity have captured the heart of Sylvia Robson. But Sylvia's devoted cousin, Philip Hepburn, hopes to marry her himself and, in order to win her, deliberately withholds crucial information - with devastating consequences. With its themes of suffering, unrequited love, and the clash between desire and duty, Sylvia's Lovers is one of the most powerfully moving of all Gaskell's novels, reputedly described by its author as 'the saddest story I ever wrote'.

Penguin Classics

Appearing in the new Classics livery in for the the BBC adaptation of Cranford in 2004

Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is a story of romance, scandal and intrigue within the confines of a watchful, gossiping English village during the early nineteenth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Pam Morris. 
 
When seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson's widowed father remarries, her life is turned upside down by the arrival of her vain, manipulative stepfather. She also acquires an intriguing new stepsister, Cynthia, glamorous, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. The two girls begin to confide in one another and Molly soon finds herself a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs - but in doing so risks losing both her own reputation and the man she secretly loves. Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel - considered to be her finest - demonstrates an intelligent and compassionate understanding of human relationships, and offers a witty, ironic critique of mid-Victorian society. 
 
This text is based on the 1866 Cornhill Magazine version of the novel. It also includes notes on textual variants between this edition and the original manuscript, a note on the story's ending and an introduction discussing the novel's challenging investigation of themes of Englishness, Darwinism and masculine authority. 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848, winning the attention of Charles Dickens, and most of her later work was published in his journals, including Cranford (1853), serialised in Dickens's Household Words. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë, whose biography she wrote. 
 
If you enjoyed Wives and Daughters, you might like Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, also available in Penguin Classics. 
 
'No nineteenth-century novel contains a more devastating rejection than this of the Victorian male assumption of moral authority' 
Pam Morris

Elizabeth Gaskell was born in London in 1810 but spent most of her life in Cheshire, Stratford-upon-Avon. She married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters by him. She worked among the poor, travelled frequently and wrote for Dickens'smagazine, Household Words. Elizabeth Gaskell was friends with Charlotte Bronte and consequently went on to write her biography. 
Pam Norris is Reader in Literature at Liverpool John Mooores University

Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centres on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries a new stepsister, Cynthia, enters Molly's quiet life. Loveable but worldly and troubling, Cynthia's arrival alters Molly's daily life. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood within the gossiping and watchful society of Hollingford. 
 
Wives and Daughters is far more than a nostalgic evocation of village life; it offers an ironic critique of mid-Victorian society

Ruth

Gaskell's moving story of a fallen woman's path to redemption

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) wrote her first novel, MARY BARTON, in 1848 as a distraction from her sorrow at the death of her only son in infancy. It won the attention of Dickens and was followed by 5 other full-length novels as well as numerous short stories and novellas. 
 
 
Angus Easson is Professor of English at Salford University. He has written widely on Elizabeth Gaskell.

Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye of a gentleman, Henry Bellingham, who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty. When she loses her job and home, he offers her comfort and shelter, only to cruelly desert her soon after. Nearly dead with grief and shame, Ruth is offered the chance of a new life among people who give her love and respect, even though they are at first unaware of her secret - an illegitimate child. When Henry enters her life again, however, Ruth must make the impossible choice between social acceptance and personal pride. In writing Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell daringly confronted prevailing views about sin and illegitimacy with her compassionate and honest portrait of a 'fallen woman'.

Gothic Tales

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling tales of the supernatural

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) wrote her first novel, MARY BARTON, in 1848 as a distraction from her sorrow at the death of her only son in infancy. It won the attention of Dickens and was followed by 5 other full-length novels as well as numerous short stories and novellas. 
 
 
Laura Kranzler has written on Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf and has published a novel.

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil doppelgänger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like 'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories in this volume form a stark contrast to the social realism of Gaskell's novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.

Cranford/Cousin Phillis

Published in the new Penguin Classics look in time for BBC series based on Cranford

Elizabeth Gaskell was born in 1810. in 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and spent her time working among the poor and writing.  Her first novel, Mary Barton received critical acclaim and she began to contribute to Household Works.  She continued to write until her death in 1865.

Cranford depicts the lives and preoccupations of the inhabitants of a small village - their petty snobberies and appetite for gossip, and their loyal support for each other in times of need. The village is dominated by women, from the kindly spinster Miss Matty, living in genteel poverty with her redoubtable sister, to Lady Glenmire, who shocks everyone by marrying the doctor. When men do appear, such as 'modern' Captain Brown or Matty's suitor from the past, they bring disruption and excitement to the everyday life of Cranford. This volume includes the novella Cousin Phillis, which depicts a fleeting love affair in a rural community at a time when old values are being supplanted by the new. Both works are exquisitely observed tragicomedies of human nature, told with great delicacy and affection.

A Tale of Manchester Life

Elizabeth Gaskell's remarkable first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life portrays a love that defies the rigid boundaries of class with tragic consequences. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by MacDonald Daly. 
 
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 Chartist agitator John Barton, Mary Barton powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the 'hungry forties' as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskell's great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South. 
 
Macdonald Daly's introduction discusses Gaskell's first novel as a pioneering work in the recognition of the conditions of the poor and working class; this edition also contains full notes and a chronology of Gaskell's life. 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848, winning the attention of Charles Dickens, and most of her later work was published in his journals. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë, whose biography she wrote. 
 
If you enjoyed Mary Barton, you might like George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, also available in Penguin Classics.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England. In 1832 she married the Rev. William Gaskell. Published in Dickens' Household Works and a lifelong friend of Charlotte Bronte, Gaskell's finest novel is North and South, also published by Penguin. 
Macdonald Daly is Lecturer in Modern Literature at Nottingham University. He has also edited DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and Kangaroo for Penguin Classics.

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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activist John Barton, Mary Barton (1848) powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the &lsquo;hungry forties&rsquo; as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskell&rsquo;s great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South.

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Patricia Ingham. 
 
When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South Gaskell skilfully fused individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale created one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature. 
 
In her introduction Patricia Ingham examines Elizabeth Gaskell's treatment of geographical, economic and class differences, and the male and female roles portrayed in the novel. This edition also includes further reading, notes and a useful glossary. 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was born in London, but grew up in the north of England in the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848, winning the attention of Charles Dickens, and most of her later work was published in his journals, including Cranford (1853), serialised in Dickens's Household Words. She was also a lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë, whose biography she wrote. 
 
If you enjoyed North and South, you might like Jane Austen's Persuasion, also available in Penguin Classics. 
 
'[An] admirable story ... full of character and power' 
Charles Dickens

When her father leaves the Church, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. 
 
In NORTH AND SOUTH Gaskell skillfully fused individual feeling with social concern and in Margaret Hale created one of the mostoriginal heroines of Victorian literature.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Beware the self-righteous man of faith, the wicked-eyed child, the jealous lover. For this is Salem, in 1691, where rumours fly on the wind and witchcraft is abroad. Lois Barclay, cursed in childhood, is a stranger in a strange land – and the devil will work his mischief on Lois’s neighbours before the season of madness is out.

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