Short Stories (All the Year Round, 1859-1863)

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810 - 1865)

In 1859 Charles Dickens launched a new weekly journal, All the Year Round, to replace Household Words. Elizabeth Gaskell remained a prolific contributor until 1863. Her fictional contributions feature strong female characters and have a darker tone than her previous works, reflecting the fashion for Gothic fiction of the 1860s and her travels in Europe. They include two of her best known shorter works: Lois the Witch, a heartfelt story of a young English girl who becomes of a victim of the Salem witch trials, and The Grey Woman, a powerful tale of a deceived wife's flight from her husband, a nobleman who turns out to be a leader of the French 'chauffeurs'. Two of Gaskell's most complex family sagas were thinly disguised as Christmas Ghost stories: The Ghost in the Garden Room (later, The Crooked Branch) and How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle. The Cage at Cranford is a short reprise of Gaskell's Cranford stories. Of the two documentary pieces, Select Committee on French Songs (attributed to Gaskell in 2015) appears here for the first time in a collection of Elizabeth Gaskell's work. (Phil Benson)

Genre(s): Single Author Collections

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Lois the Witch: Part the First Phil Benson
00:50:41
Play 02 Lois the Witch: Part the Second Phil Benson
01:11:51
Play 03 Lois the Witch: Part the Third 1 Phil Benson
00:59:10
Play 04 Lois the Witch: Part the Third 2 Phil Benson
00:54:28
Play 05 The Ghost in the Garden Room 1 Phil Benson
01:04:53
Play 06 The Ghost in the Garden Room 2 Phil Benson
00:54:15
Play 07 The Grey Woman: Portion the First Phil Benson
00:43:05
Play 08 The Grey Woman: Portion the Second Phil Benson
00:54:24
Play 09 The Grey Woman: Portion the Third Phil Benson
00:54:37
Play 10 Select Committee on French Songs: Sitting the First Phil Benson
00:42:04
Play 11 Select Committee on French Songs: Sitting the Second Phil Benson
00:44:48
Play 12 An Italian Institution Phil Benson
00:24:25
Play 13 The Cage at Cranford Phil Benson
00:29:37
Play 14 How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle 1 Phil Benson
00:56:04
Play 15 How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle 2 Phil Benson
00:44:16