The sheer variety and accomplishment of Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter fiction is amazing. This new volume contains six of her finest stories that have been selected specifically to demonstrate this, and to trace the development of her art. As diverse in setting as in subject matter, these tales move f[...]

Hustrur och döttrar, Elizabeth Gaskells stora oavslutade roman från 1865 är både en underhållande ironisk sedeskildring och en rörande kärlekshistoria. Den utspelar sig i 1820-talets England i det lilla lantliga samhället Hollingford. I centrum står den unga Molly Gibson, doktorns dotter, s[...]

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'We're their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds...' Based in the industrial unrest of 1840s Manchester,[...]

'It's the masters as has wrought this woe; it's the masters as should pay for it.' Set in Manchester in the 1840s - a period of industrial unrest and extreme deprivation - Mary Barton depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel[...]

A revolutionary political and social commentary, North and South confirmed Gaskell's place in the company of Victorian England's finest novelists. This Norton Critical Edition is annotated and edited by the preeminent Gaskell scholar, Alan Shelston, and includes the full text of the closely related [...]

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Elizabeth Gaskell's birth we embark on a series of unabridged and abridged recordings of her major novels. "North and South" follows our widely-praised recording of Cranford (2008), transporting the listener to the heart of Victorian England by vividly delineati[...]

Mary Barton is the pretty daughter of a factory worker who finds herself dreaming of a better life when the mill-owner's charming son, Henry, starts to court her. She rejects her childhood friend Jem's affections in the hope of marrying Henry and escaping from the hard and bitter life that is the fa[...]

Based on three Elizabeth Gaskell novels, The Cranford Chronicles follows the small absurdities and major tragedies in the lives of the people of Cranford, a small Cheshire market town, during one extraordinary year. In this witty and poignant story the railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards[...]

Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye 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 offer[...]

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Bronte 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 Bronte's life from her isolated childhood, thr[...]

Margaret's safe existence is turned upside down when she has to move to the grim northern town of Milton. Not only does she have her eyes opened by the poverty and hardship she encounters there, but she is thrown into confusion by stern factory owner John Thornton - whose treatment of his workers br[...]