Gothic Tales

Gaskell, Elizabeth

£10.99

The stories in this collection combine realism and fantasy. The themes are familiar from Gaskell’s novels, but their treatment is revealingly different, ranging from ghost stories and comic fantasy, to a realistic tale of 17th-century witch trials.

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Publish Date: 14/08/2000
ISBN: 9780140437416 Category: Tags: ,

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 doppelgänger 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.

Additional information

Weight 287 g
Dimensions 198 × 129 × 18 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

xxxvi, 366

Language

English

Edition

New Edition

Dewey

823.8 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K