Wives and Daughters - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140430466 ISBN 13: 9780140430462

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1969

Synopsis

The heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel passes from childhood to maturity in a process that, though often painful for her, is sharply and humorously observed. Set in the early 19th century, this novel is a subtle representation of historical change explored in human terms.

About this title

From the Back Cover

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 step-sister enters Molly's quiet life - loveable, but worldly and troubling, Cynthia. 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. 'No nineteenth-century novel contains a more devastating rejection than this of the Victorian male assumption of moral authority', writes Pam Morris in her introduction to this new edition, in which she explores the novel's main themes - the role of women, Darwinism and the concept of Englishness - and its literary and social context.

About the Author

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was born in London in 1810, but she spent her formative years in Cheshire, Stratford-upon-Avon and the north of England. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell, who became well known as the minister of the Unitarian Chapel in Manchester’s Cross Street. As well as leading a busy domestic life as minister’s wife and mother of four daughters, she worked among the poor, traveled frequently and wrote. Mary Barton (1848) was her first success.Two years later she began writing for Dickens’s magazine, Household Words, to which she contributed fiction for the next thirteen years, notably a further industrial novel, North and South (1855).

In 1850 she met and secured the friendship of Charlotte Brontė. After Charlotte’s death in March 1855, Patrick Brontė chose his daughter’s friend and fellow-novelist to write The Life of Charlotte Brontė (1857), a probing and sympathetic account, that has attained classic stature. Elizabeth Gaskell’s position as a clergyman’s wife and as a successful writer introduced her to a wide circle of friends, both from the professional world of Manchester and from the larger literary world. Her output was substantial and completely professional. Dickens discovered her resilient strength of character when trying to impose his views on her as editor of Household Words. She proved that she was not to be bullied, even by such a strong-willed man.

Her later works, Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), Cousin Phillis (1864) and Wives and Daughters (1866) reveal that she was continuing to develop her writing in new literary directions. Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly in November 1865.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1969
• ISBN 10: 0140430466
• ISBN 13: 9780140430462
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 720
• Editor: Smith Frank Glover