Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

The heart of this collection is Gaskell's novella Cousin Phillis, which depicts a vanishing way of life and a girl's disappointment in love: deceptively simple, its undercurrent of feeling leaves an indelible impression. The other five stories in this selection range from a tale of urban poverty and a fallen woman to an historical tale in which echoes of the French Revolution, the bleakness of winter in Westmorland, and a tragic secret are brought...

This portrait of life in a quiet English country town in the mid-nineteenth century follows the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters living in reduced circumstances.

Cranford, in 1842, is a market town in northwest England. It is a place governed by etiquette, custom and above all, an intricate network of ladies. It seems that life has always been conducted according to their social rules. For spinsters Deborah Jenkyns, the arbiter of correctness, and Matty, her dumurring sister, the town is a hub of intrigue. Handsome new doctor Frank Harrison has arrived from London; a retired Captain and his daughters move...

"After her parents pass away, young Rosamond is raised by her nurse in the ancestral home of her aunt, Miss Furnivall. One day the two uncover an exceptionally beautiful old portrait. A relative, distant or close? And is that the strange sound of a distant organ, or simply the wind?"--

Set in a richly portrayed society well-stocked with eccentric nobles and gossipy villagers, this story centers around 17-year-old Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a respected country doctor. The well-ordered world of Molly's childhood is soon to be complicated by new people and unexpected situations. Most devastating is her father's decision to remarry after many years of widowhood. Molly's faltering efforts to cope gracefully with an impossible...

Based on Elizabeth Gaskell's classic Victorian love story. Independent-minded Margaret Hale moves with her parents to Milton, a manufacturing city in England's north. Compared to the bucolic south where she was raised, Milton stifles Margaret with industrial smoke and soot, and she takes an instant dislike to John Thornton, the ambitious and severe mill owner. But amid a workers₂ strike and family misfortunes, Margaret begins to reconsider her sentiments....

Contains short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell, Amelia Edwards, Charles Collins (Wilkie Collins's brother) and other Victorian writers. Published for the first time in 1863-64 in a Christmas Special to Household Worlds, 'Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings' and 'Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy'. Recently widowed, Mrs. Lirriper devotes her energies to attending to the needs of her assorted lodgers. But when a newborn child is abandoned to her care, her responsibilities extend...

Set in the early 1840s, this is the original BBC miniseries of Elizabeth Gaskell's classic tale of a fictional Victorian country village in which the genteel ladies of Cranford struggle to face an uncertain future with dignity and 19th Century decorum.