Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Brontë's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her...

Penguin Classics relaunch Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owner's son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the...

Beautifully designed, clothbound edition Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Cranford, Gaskell's best-known work, is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and...

North and South is one of the earliest novels of industrial alienation, tellingly linked to the plight of 19th-century women. It tells of the relationship between Margaret Hale, a girl from the old rural south, and John Thornton, a mill owner from the new industrial north.

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 stepsister, Cynthia, enters Molly's quiet life. Loveable but worldly and troubling, Cynthia's arrival alters Molly's daily life. The narrative traces the development of the two girls into womanhood...

Cranford, Gaskell's best-known work, is set in a small rural town inhabited largely by 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. However, domestic peace is constantly threatened by financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and...

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. Disappearances, inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; Lois the Witch, a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in The Old Nurse's Story a mysterious child roams...

Ruth is the story of Ruth Hilton, an orphaned young seamstress who captures the attention of a gentleman, Henry Bellingham, who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty. When she loses her job and home, he offers her comfort and shelter, only to cruelly desert her soon after. Nearly dead with grief and shame, Ruth is given the chance of...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books Beware the self-righteous man of faith, the wicked-eyed child, the jealous lover. For this is Salem, in 1691, where rumours fly on the wind and witchcraft is abroad. Lois the Witch, cursed in childhood, is a stranger in a strange land - and the devil will work his mischief on Lois's...

Launching a major new paperback series - Penguin English Library. The Penguin English Library edition of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. 'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?' Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded...

A man ... is so in the way in the house! A vivid and affectionate portrait of a provincial town in early Victorian England, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women. Undaunted by poverty, but dismayed by changes brought by the railway and by new commercial practices, the ladies of Cranford respond to disruption...

When Margaret Hale is uprooted from the quiet gentility of southern England and thrust into the industrial tumult of Milton, a northern mill town, her world fractures. Confronted with striking workers, choking factories, and a proud, implacable mill owner named John Thornton, Margaret must reckon with her deepest convictions about justice, class, power, and love. First published in 1854, North...

As far as she could see, her life was ordained to be lonely, and she must subdue her nature to her life, and, if possible, bring the two into harmony. When she could employ herself in fiction, all was comparatively well. The characters were her companions in the quiet hours, which she spent utterly alone, unable often to stir out...

Set amid the rapidly changing social, spiritual, and moral landscape of the industrial revolution, North and South is a forceful, brilliant, and romantic novel about freedom and the cost of profit. When Margaret Hale, a minister's daughter, relocates with her family to Milton in the north of England, she witnesses firsthand the brutal working conditions in Milton's factories and mills....

Little Black Classics - the new series to celebrate Penguin's 80th anniversary. The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell is a chilling tale of mystery and suspense. Set against the backdrop of a cold, desolate landscape, the story immerses readers in a haunting atmosphere, where even the weather plays a sinister role. 'Even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather,...