Ruth - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438268157 ISBN 13: 9781438268156

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2008

Synopsis

The book is a ,social novel, dealing with Victorian views about sin and illegitimacy. It is a surprisingly compassionate portrayal of a 'fallen woman', a type of person normally outcast from respectable society.

The title of the novel refers to the main character Ruth Hilton, an orphaned young seamstress who is seduced and then abandoned by gentleman Henry Bellingham. The novel tells the story of Ruth, pregnant and alone, as she struggles to protect her child from the social stigma of illegitimacy

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 Brontë--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:

Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) published five more novels including "Wives and Daughters" (1865).

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1438268157
• ISBN 13: 9781438268156
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274