English
St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Wives and Daughters
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
New York, NY
2005, 672 pages
Amy M. King is the author of the introduction and notes to this
Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Elizabeth Gaskell’s
19th-century novel Wives and Daughters. This is an
affordable edition for the student and general reader that pulls
together a constellation of influences— biographical, historical
and literary— to enrich each reader’s understanding. Tremendously
popular in her lifetime, Elizabeth Gaskell has often been
overshadowed by her contemporaries the Brontës and George
Eliot.
An enchanting tale of romance, scandal and intrigue in the
English town of Hollingford around the 1830s, Wives and
Daughters tells the story of Molly Gibson, the 17-year-old
daughter of a widowed country doctor. When her father remarries,
she forms a close friendship with her new stepsister—the beautiful
and worldly Cynthia—until 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 the world is out of joint and
it is up to her to set it right.