Cousin Phillis (Penguin Popular Classics) - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140621946 ISBN 13: 9780140621945

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - It is a great thing for a lad when he is first turned into the independence of lodgings. I do not think I ever was so satisfied and proud in my life as when, at seventeen, I sate down in a little three-cornered room above a pastry-cook's shop in the county town of Eltham. My father had left me that afternoon, after delivering himself of a few plain precepts, strongly expressed, for my guidance in the new course of life on which I was entering. I was to be a clerk under the engineer who had undertaken to make the little branch line from Eltham to Hornby. My father had got me this situation, which was in a position rather above his own in life; or perhaps I should say, above the station in which he was born and bred; for he was raising himself every year in men's consideration and respect. He was a mechanic by trade, but he had some inventive genius, and a great deal of perseverance, and had devised several valuable improvements in railway machinery. He did not do this for profit, though, as was reasonable, what came in the natural course of things was acceptable; he worked out his ideas, because, as he said, 'until he could put them into shape, they plagued him by night and by day.' But this is enough about my dear father; it is a good thing for a country where there are many like him. He was a sturdy Independent by descent and conviction; and this it was, I believe, which made him place me in the lodgings at the pastry-cook's.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was an English novelist and short-story writer known for her interest in contemporary social issues that other authors often preferred to ignore, including industrialisation (Mary Barton, 1848), illegitimacy (Ruth, 1853) and the North-South divide (North and South, 1854). Her best-known work is probably her Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) and three of her books, Wives and Daughters (1865), North and South and Cranford (1851) have been adapted for BBC television in recent years.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140621946
• ISBN 13: 9780140621945
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 1