Description: Tremendously popular in her lifetime, Elizabeth Gaskell has often been overshadowed by her contemporaries the Brontës and George Eliot. Yet the reputation of her long-neglected masterpiece Wives and Daughters continues to grow, fulfilling Henry James's prophecy that the novel would "continue for years to come to be read and relished . . . so delicately, so elaborately, so artistically, so truthfully, and heartily is the story wrought out."

An enchanting tale of romance, scandal, and intrigue in the gossipy English town of Hollingford around the 1830s, Wives and Daughters tells the story of Molly Gibson, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a widowed country doctor. When her father remarries, she forms a close friendship with her new stepsisterthe beautiful and worldly Cynthiauntil they become love rivals for the affections of Squire Hamley's sons, Osbourne and Roger. When sudden illness and death reveal some secrets while shrouding others in even deeper mystery, Molly feels that t...

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