This classic novel has been thrice adapted for the screen by the BBC. Mary Smith relates the story of her time with middle-aged spinster sisters Miss Matty and Miss Deborah. Witty, poignant, and often ironic, Cranford is the tale of what these two women will do to remain respectable, proper, and kind with only moderate means. “… an extremely clever piece of writing.”-Guardian (UK)

Cranford is Elizabeth Gaskell’s gently comic picture of life and manners in an English country village during the 1830s. It describes the small adventures in the lives of two middle-aged sisters in reduced circumstances, Matilda and Deborah Jenkyns, who do their best to maintain their standards of propriety, decency, and kindness. At the center of the novel is Miss Matty, whose warm heart and tender ways compel affection and regard from everyone around her. Also revealed are the foibles and attributes of the pompous Mrs. Jamieson and her awesome butler, the genial Captain Brown, the loyal housemaid Martha, and others.

Using an intimate, gossipy voice that never turns sentimental, Gaskell skillfully conveys the old-fashioned habits, subtle class distinctions, and genteel poverty of the townspeople. Cranford is one of the author’s best-loved works.

Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell’s best-known work, is a humorous account of a nineteenth-century English village dominated by a group of genteel but modestly circumstanced 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 reappearance of long-lost relatives.
By eschewing the conventional marriage plot with its nubile heroines and focusing instead on a group of middle-aged and elderly spinsters, Gaskell does something highly unusual within the novel genre. Through her masterful management of the novel’s tone, she underscores the value and dignity of single women’s lives even as she causes us to laugh at her characters’ foibles. Charles Dickens was the first of many readers to extol its wit and charm, and it has consistently been Gaskell’s most popular work.

Hamley es un pequeno pueblo donde Edward Wilkins ejerce como abogado, al igual que hizo su padre antes que el. Su habilidad para contar historias y su aguda inteligencia permiten que se gane la simpatia de los nobles locales, aunque por supuesto, nunca lo consideraran como un igual y lo sabe. Conmocionado por la muerte de su esposa y su segunda hija, el senor Wilkins se centra en su hija mayor, Ellinor, cuya vida parece perfecta: esta enamorada del joven senor Corbet, un estudiante de derecho brillante y ambicioso; todo le sonrie, hasta el punto de que no advierte el evidente estado de decadencia de su padre, quien, sintiendo el peso de su inadaptacion social y de su propio fracaso, vuelca su descontento en vicios, lujos y alcohol. Todo se detiene una noche, una noche oscura en la que Ellinor es testigo de un crimen. Y sera este acontecimiento el que ponga patas arriba su vida de un modo dramatico.

In this original collection from Skyboat Media and Blackstone Publishing, Elizabeth Gaskell showcases the height of gothic fiction’s ability to delight in the otherworldly and to dig deep into what truly haunts us.

Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, “Lois the Witch” reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America. Though she is a God-fearing and honest girl, it seems her identity as the strange, new, English girl is all anyone can see and she becomes a target for the superstitious townsfolk. In “The Grey Woman” we follow a young woman who learns the true nature of her new husband and is forced to flee their isolated home. In “Curious, If True” we are given a peek into a party attended by some very familiar fairy-tale figures. And finally, in “The Doom of the Griffiths” we must wait and see if the prophecy of an old family curse will be fulfilled.

A collaborator and friend of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell is a leading figure in Victorian literature.

Full contents:

“Lois the Witch” – read by Gabrielle de Cuir”The Half-Brothers” – read by Stefan Rudnicki”The Old Nurse’s Story” – read by Justine Eyre”The Grey Woman” – read by Juliet Mills”Curious, If True” – read by Stefan Rudnicki”Disappearances” – read by Juliet Mills”The Doom of the Griffiths” – read by Justine Eyre

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South skillfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. 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 skillfully fused individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale created one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

Originally written for Charles Dickens’ Household Words magazine, The Poor Clare is a dark, gothic short novel of thwarted love and a family curse that vividly illustrates the social tensions of Victorian England.

The intentional killing of a woman’s dog unleashes a torrent of rage. In her desire for revenge, the woman curses the dog’s killer: All that the murderer loves most, he will lose.

This haunting tale brilliantly demonstrates Elizabeth Gaskell’s understanding of the tensions between Catholics and Protestants and the harsh realities of class society.

Set in nineteenth-century England, Wives and Daughters centers on the story of the youthful Molly Gibson, raised by her doctor father. When he remarries, a new stepsister enters Molly’s quiet life, the 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, generally thought to be Elizabeth Gaskell’s finest achievement, is far more than a nostalgic evocation of village life. It offers an ironic critique of mid-Victorian society through the themes of Darwinism, the role of women, and the concept of Englishness.

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell’s last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman’s presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival of Cynthia, her dazzling stepsister, Molly finds her situation hard to accept. Intertwined with the story of the Gibsons is that of Squire Hamley and his two sons. As Molly grows up and falls in love, she learns to judge people for what they are, not what they seem. Through Molly’s observations the hierarchies, social values, and social changes of early-nineteenth-century English life are made vivid in a novel that is timeless in its representation of human relationships.