Ruth (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199581959 ISBN 13: 9780199581955

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth (1853) was the first mainstream novel to make a fallen woman its eponymous heroine. It is a remarkable story of love, of the sanctuary and tyranny of the family, and of the consequences of lies and deception, one that lays bare Victorian hypocrisy and sexual double-standards. Shocking to contemporary readers, its radical utopian vision of "a pure woman faithfully presented" predates Hardy's Tess by nearly forty years. This fully revised and corrected new edition is based on the three-volume first edition of 1853, collated with the one-volume 1855 edition. Tim Dolin's fascinating new introduction challenges the view of Ruth as one of Gaskell's weaker novels and explores its radicalism and cultural influence, highlighting the remarkable story of love, family, and hypocrisy that it tells. In addition, the book includes an up-to-date bibliography, a chronology of Gaskell's life and work, and invaluable notes that shed much light on the book's historical, religious, and literary allusions and points of significance.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

As interest in 19th-century English literature by women has been reinvigorated by a resurgence in popularity of the works of Jane Austen, readers are rediscovering a writer whose fiction, once widely beloved, fell by the wayside. British novelist ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL (1810-1865)--whose books were sometimes initially credited to, simply, "Mrs. Gaskell"--is now recognized as having created some of the most complex and progressive depictions of women in the literature of the age, and is today justly celebrated for her precocious use of the regional dialect and slang of England's industrial North.

Ruth--Gaskell's third novel, first published in three volumes in 1853--is notable as one of the rare instances in the fiction of the era of a positive portrayal of unwed motherhood and for its thematic condemnation of the social stigma of illegitimacy. The tale of a young woman seduced and abandoned by her lover, then taken in and protected by a kindly minister and his sister, it is remarkably progressive for the period.

Friend and literary companion to the likes of Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontė--the latter of whom Gaskell wrote an acclaimed 1857 biography--Gaskell is today being restored to her rightful place alongside them. This charming replica volume is an excellent opportunity for 21st-century fans of British literature to embrace one of its most unjustly forgotten authors.

About the Author:

Tim Dolin is Associate Professor in the School of Media, Culture, and Creative Arts at Curtin University of Technology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0199581959
• ISBN 13: 9780199581955
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Dolin Tim