Book description
Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the
supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by
local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the
Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows
how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old
Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland
moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil
doppelg nger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like
'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories
in this volume form a stark contrast to the social realism of Gaskell's
novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) wrote her first novel, MARY BARTON, in
1848 as a distraction from her sorrow at the death of her only son in
infancy. It won the attention of Dickens and was followed by 5 other
full-length novels as well as numerous short stories and novellas.
Laura Kranzler has written on Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf and
has published a novel.
