Wives and Daughters

Molly Gibson, the only child of a widowed country doctor in the little town of Hollingford, is still a girl when her father remarries, partly to give her a guide as she grows up. Her stepmother, a former governess, is vain, shallow and a little dishonest, but the stepmother's daughter, Cynthia, glamorous and secretive, becomes Molly's dearest friend. Both girls are drawn to the sons of the local squire, and Cynthia's hidden past brings Molly close to scandal.

Elizabeth Gaskell was finishing the novel when she died suddenly in 1865, and the last chapter was never written, though the ending is clear. Many readers consider it her masterpiece, a witty and tender study of family life; Roger Hamley, the squire's scientific son, was partly modelled on the young Charles Darwin, to whom Gaskell was distantly related. For more in the same vein, read Cranford and North and South.