Short Stories (All the Year Round, 1859-1863)
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Read by Phil Benson
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) (0 hr 28 min)
Chapters
Lois the Witch: Part the First | 50:41 | Read by Phil Benson |
Lois the Witch: Part the Second | 1:11:51 | Read by Phil Benson |
Lois the Witch: Part the Third 1 | 59:10 | Read by Phil Benson |
Lois the Witch: Part the Third 2 | 54:28 | Read by Phil Benson |
The Ghost in the Garden Room 1 | 1:04:53 | Read by Phil Benson |
The Ghost in the Garden Room 2 | 54:15 | Read by Phil Benson |
The Grey Woman: Portion the First | 43:05 | Read by Phil Benson |
The Grey Woman: Portion the Second | 54:24 | Read by Phil Benson |
The Grey Woman: Portion the Third | 54:37 | Read by Phil Benson |
Select Committee on French Songs: Sitting the First | 42:04 | Read by Phil Benson |
Select Committee on French Songs: Sitting the Second | 44:48 | Read by Phil Benson |
An Italian Institution | 24:25 | Read by Phil Benson |
The Cage at Cranford | 29:37 | Read by Phil Benson |
How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle 1 | 56:04 | Read by Phil Benson |
How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle 2 | 44:16 | Read by Phil Benson |
Reviews
some are boring
Tes Carpenter-Camhi
Some of these stories are pretty good but a couple aren't stories and didn't hold my attention at all.
Different book however...Phil Benson is a superb reader.
Karen Bromberg
Interesting. well done to the reader
Oae