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 offered the chance of a new life among people who give her love and respect, even though they are at first unaware of her secret - an illegitimate child. When Henry enters her life again, however, Ruth must make the impossible choice between social acceptance and personal pride. In writing Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell daringly confronted prevailing views about sin and illegitimacy with her compassionate and honest portrait of a 'fallen woman'.

Product Description: Why buy our paperbacks? Standard Font size of 10 for all books High Quality Paper Fulfilled by Amazon Expedited shipping 30 Days Money Back Guarantee BEWARE of Low-quality sellers Don't buy cheap paperbacks just to save a few dollars...read more

Quand la mort entre dans une maison le jour de Noël, le contraste de ce qui est avec ce qui a été donne au chagrin une amertume nouvelle et ajoute à la désolation le sentiment d’un isolement plus complet. Jacques Leigh mourut au moment même où les cloches lointaines de l’église de Rochdale appelaient les fidèles au service du matin, le jour de Noël 1836. Quelques minutes avant sa mort, il ouvrit des yeux déjà voilés, et, par un mouvement presque imperceptible des lèvres, fit signe à sa femme qu’il avait quelque chose à dire. Elle se pencha vers lui et recueillit ces paroles entrecoupées : « Je lui pardonne, Anne ; que Dieu me pardonne ! » – Oh ! mon trésor, mon bien-aimé, guéris-toi seulement et je te remercierai tous les jours de ce que tu viens de dire ! Que Dieu te bénisse du ciel pour ce que tu as dit ! Tu n’es pas si agité, peut-être que... oh ! mon Dieu ! Il était mort pendant qu’elle parlait.

But, for all her screen, she felt a pair of eyes were fixed upon her with a glow of admiration deepening their honest brightness. Somehow, look in what direction she would, she caught the glance of those eyes before she could see anything else. So she played with her apron-strings, and tried not to feel so self-conscious. There were another pair of eyes,-not such beautiful, sparkling eyes,-deep-set, earnest, sad, nay even gloomy, watching her every movement; but of this she was not aware. Philip had not recovered from the rebuff she had given him by refusing his offered hand, and was standing still, in angry silence, when Mrs. Corney thrust a young woman just arrived upon his attention. -from Chapter XII: "New Year's Fête" 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 broadminded 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. Sylvia's Lovers-Gaskell's fifth novel, first published in 1863-is the melodramatic tale of a star-crossed romantic triangle between farmgirl Sylvia Robson and the two men who love her: her cousin Philip and sailor Charlie Kinread. Though today considered one of Gaskell's minor works, the author herself called Sylvia's Lovers "the saddest story I ever wrote." Friend and literary companion to such figures as Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë-the latter of whom Gaskell wrote an applauded 1857 biography-Gaskell is today being restored to her rightful place alongside her. This delightful replica volume is an excellent opportunity for 21st-century fans of British literature to embrace one of its most unjustly forgotten authors.

Product Description: The Moorland CottageElizabeth GaskellNovellas and CollectionsElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (29 September 1810 — 12 November 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...read more

Product Description: Half a Life-time Ago is a classic English novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small farm-house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of land by which it was surrounded...read more

Product Description: Elizabeth Gaskell was a British author during the Victorian era, and her novels are notable for detailed descriptions of the different classes of society in 19th century Britain.

Product Description: Cousin Phillis―a miniature masterpiece―is set in the 1840s, when the coming of the railway was changing the face of England, and quiet rural communities, coming into contact with the outside world, were changed for ever. The story focuses on the effect these changes have on a naïve country girl, Phillis, as she encounters love, with all its pains and pleasures, for the first time...read more

Product Description: Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) is a landmark biography of one great Victorian woman novelist by another. Gaskell was a friend of Charlotte Brontë, and, having been invited to write the official life, determined both to tell the truth and to honour her friend...read more

Product Description: Two Books in OneDisappearancesandHand and HeartByElizabeth Cleghorn GaskellElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (29 September 1810 — 12 November 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...read more

Elizabeth Gaskell’s last novel, a tender story of parents, children and step-children, mistakes, and secrets, is considered her masterpiece Set in the watchful, gossiping society of Hollingford, this warm tale of love and longing centers on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, the spirited, loyal daughter of the local doctor. Their peaceful, close-knit home is turned upside down when he decides to remarry. While Molly struggles to adjust to her snobbish stepmother, she forms a close relationship with her glamorous new stepsister Cynthia. The strength of this friendship is soon tested as their lives become entwined with Squire Hamley and his two sons. Far more than a nostalgic evocation of village life, this novel offers an ironic critique of mid-Victorian society.

Product Description: Gaskell's witty and poignant comedy of country-town life, and a gently comic picture of life in an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century, Cranford describes the small adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances...read more

Product Description: Mary BartonA Tale of Manchester LifebyElizabeth GaskellMary Barton is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian lower class...read more

A colorful, conversational diary of two trips to France, a year apart, which Mrs. Gaskell, clearly a Francophile, took toward the end of her life. She details everything from French dress to meals to customs to architecture, usually with enough comparison to their English equivalents that modern-day Americans can understand the difference.

You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I daresay you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke of me being a good girl at my needle, and a steady, honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor.

MARY BARTON (1848) by the socially conscious Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell is the heartfelt story of working class families in England, of poverty and human dignity. Mary Barton, beautiful daughter of a mill worker has caught the eye of Henry Carson, the rich mill owner's son, but she is also loved by Jem Wilson, a poor young man of lower class. When tragedy strikes in the form of a murder in the community, Mary must fight for justice and for her true love, in order to redeem those she cares about most.

A poignant tale about illicit love, regret ending in delight. It deals with the story of a young girl Lizzie who commits a sin and its repercussions. Gaskell brilliantly portraits the deep and true relations of a family and ends the story with a moving reunion. Touching and emotional!

There is a mill by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany. There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill; it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg. The river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle. Again, further from the river, there is a garden full of willows, and arbours, and flower-beds not well kept, but very profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the arbours together. In each of these arbours is a stationary table of white painted wood, and light moveable chairs of the same colour and material.

Product Description: On the north-eastern shores of England there is a town called Monkshaven, containing at the present day about fifteen thousand inhabitants. There were, however, but half the number at the end of the last century, and it was at that period that the events narrated in the following pages occurred...read more

CURIOUS, IF TRUE: Strange Tales is a collection of five dark Victorian tales of suspense, horror, mood and mystery by Elizabeth Gaskell, published variously between 1852 and 1861.