Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
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For Paul Manning, one of the undeniable charms of the countryside is his beautiful yet naive cousin Phillis. But, when Paul finds himself uncomfortably implicated in the romantic drama that unfolds between Phillis and his sophisticated colleague, country life suddenly becomes not quite the simple and artless pleasure it once was.
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The narrator - the old nurse of the title - is an old family retainer who has worked in the service of the same family for three generations. She tells the young children about a dark incident that she experienced in the company of the children's mother, when she was a young woman and visiting her mother's ancestral home.
This story hits all the marks of a classic ghost story: an isolated manor, creepy music sounding from a disused organ, ghostly...
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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...
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North and South tells the story of Margaret Hale, a southerner newly settled in the northern industrial town of Milton, whose ready sympathy with the discontented millworkers sits uneasily with her growing attraction to the charismatic mill owner, John Thornton. The novel poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience, ranging from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny and industrial action. Margaret's...