Just before Roger leaves on a two-year scientific expedition to Africa, he asks for Cynthia's hand and she accepts, although she insists that their engagement should remain secret until Roger returns.

Gibson overhears that Osborne may be fatally ill, she begins promoting the match. Unfortunately, Roger falls in love with Cynthia and when Mrs. Nevertheless, they are loyal to each other & often conspire to elude both Cynthia's mother and Molly's father.Molly has harbored a secret love for Roger Hamley, the younger son of the local squire. Preston, who is rumored to be a gambler and a scoundrel. Cynthia has been educated in France, and it gradually becomes apparent that she and her mother have secrets in their past, involving the land agent from the great house, Mr. Kirkpatrick to provide Molly a mother, she is unhappy at the event, but warms to the inevitability when she meets Mr.s Kirkpatrick's daughter, Cynthia, to whom she forms an instant friendship.The two girls couldn't be more different: Cynthia is far more worldly and rebellious than Molly, who is naive and slightly awkward. She is attractive, but also innocent and unworldly. Gaskell died on 12 November 1865, leaving her longest work, 'Wives and Daughters' incomplete.Elizabeth Gaskell's final novel (she died just before she finished the book) is a gentle comedy of manners very much in the style of Jane Austen and was serialized in The Cornhill magazine from 1864 to 1865 Molly Gibson is the only child of widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s. The 'Life of Charlotte Brontë' (1857) was written with admiration and covered a huge quantity of firsthand material with great narrative skill. When Charlotte died in 1855, her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography. Gaskell's work brought her many friends, including the novelist Charlotte Brontë. 'North and South' was published the following year. It was an immediate success, winning the praise of Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle.ĭickens invited her to contribute to his magazine, 'Household Words', where her next major work, 'Cranford', appeared in 1853. However, the death of her only son inspired her to write her first novel, 'Mary Barton', which was published anonymously in 1848. Motherhood and the obligations of a minister's wife kept her busy. In 1832, she married William Gaskell, also a Unitarian minister, and they settled in the industrial city of Manchester. After her mother's early death, she was raised by an aunt who lived in Knutsford in Cheshire.

Gaskell was a Victorian novelist, also notable for her biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë.Įlizabeth Stevenson was born in London on 29 September 1810, the daughter of a Unitarian minister. AuthorElizabeth Gaskell WIVES AND DAUGHTERS

Wives and daughters gaskell