- Published: 1 February 2011
- ISBN: 9781409058014
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 656
Wives and Daughters
- Published: 1 February 2011
- ISBN: 9781409058014
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 656
Her stories are wonderfully funny, but the ridiculous is bathed in a poignant, dreamlike mood found nowhere else in fiction, and profound ideas and strong values sleep beneath everyday details of bonnets and cakes
Jenny Uglow
My dear Scheherazade...I am sure your powers of narrative can never be exhausted in a single night, but must be good for at least a thousand nights and one
Charles Dickens
Pah! to Dickens. Eat your heart out, Little Nell. That Elizabeth Gaskell could write a death scene to make your socks melt
Scotsman
People who read her always come away surprised at how modern she sounds. You don't have to think yourself into her century in order to sympathise, since her guiding principle was no more or less than a sense of practical, day-today justice, totally outside the abiding gentleman-lady-peasant-donkey-peasant's wife hierarchy which surrounded her
Zoe Williams, Evening Standard
She was a pioneer, multi-tasking mother... Gaskell's work will always be one of the adornments of liberal Britain
Guardian
