Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) moved from the London of her childhood to Knutsford and later Manchester, and her experience of the differences between North and South deeply informed her writing. Writer of six novels, numerous shorter works and the biography of her great friend Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell was at first published anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household Words.

Gaskell's other novels Mary Barton, Cranford and North and South are also published in the Penguin English Library.

The Penguin English Library Edition of Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

"Eh, miss, but that be a rare young lady! She do have such pretty coaxing ways ..."

Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly's life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is some solace in the shape of her new stepsister Cynthia, who is beautiful, sophisticated and irresistible to every man she meets. Soon the girls become close, and Molly finds herself cajoled into becoming a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs. But in doing so, Molly risks ruining her reputation in the gossiping village of Hollingford - and jeopardizing everything with the man she is secretly in love with.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.