Poor Clare, The (Art of the Novel) - Softcover

Elizabeth Gaskell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612192181 ISBN 13: 9781612192185

Publisher: MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING, 2013

Synopsis

The haunting novella The Poor Clare is one of Elizabeth's Gaskell's Gothic tales. It tells the story of Bridget Fitzgerald, who unwittingly puts a curse on her own estranged daughter and the granddaughter she did not know existed. When she discovers that the curse has fallen on her own kin, Bridget submits herself to the rituals of an obscure religious sect, hoping to lift the curse. The Poor Clare sensitively treats issues of class and Catholic and Protestant religious tension in Victorian England, making this an innovative and thrilling gem from Gaskell's wide-ranging oeuvre.

About this title

Product Description

She rose from her scat, and came and clutched at my arm and looked in my eyes. There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what had become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and sat rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not daring to speak to the lone and awful woman. After a little pause, she knelt down before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke to her by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany.

About the Author

ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810-1865) was born Elizabeth Stevenson in London, the daughter of a Unitarian minister who resigned his position on conscientious grounds. Her mother died a year after her birth, and Gaskell spent her formative years in the care of relatives in northern England. In 1832, she married William Gaskell, a well-known Unitarian minister, and joined him to work among the poor for social reform. They had four daughters, as well as a son who died in infancy. His death left Gaskell so distraught that she began writing for distraction. Her first major success was the novel Mary Barton (1848)--published, as were her first several works of short fiction, under the pseudonym Cotton Mather Mills. For many years, she also wrote regularly for Charles Dickens's magazine, Household Words, contributing stories and a serialized novel, Cranford. Meanwhile, the Gaskells' home in Manchester became a popular stop for writers and reformers, including Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Ruskin, and Charlotte Brontė, who became a close friend. After Brontė's death, her father, Patrick Brontė, asked Gaskell to write her biography. The Life of Charlotte Brontė proved a pioneering and controversial psychological study of Brontė's family life, and remains perhaps the most important book on the writer. Gaskell died of a heart attack in 1865. A memorial to her lies at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

About this edition

• Publisher: MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1612192181
• ISBN 13: 9781612192185
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96