"It is true that specific disagreements about fixed norms can often prevent full friendship, even with the largest-souled of friends. But those I care most about offer so much ethical value so intensely, with such clear evidence that they are themselves pursuing the goods they offer, that differences of opinion seem trivial by comparison. What is more, the proffered gifts that I reject—let us say, some of the details in Dante’s Thomism or Milton’s theodicy—are often just the kind a true friend might offer me in all sincerity; the very act of deciding whether ‘to accept them—the “practice” of conversing with the author about the gift before rejecting it—is itself a fine gift of another kind. The au-thors who become our lasting friends are those who offer to teach us, by the sheer activity of considering their gifts, a life larger than any specific doctrine we might accept or reject."

-- Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction.

I have been using some dead times these past few weeks to go through/purge my latest Project Gutenberg raids, and there are two funny findings I have made:

1- Patricia Brent, Spinster (1918), by Herbert George Jenkins

In general a run-of-the-mill fake dating romance, short and innoffensive, but here's the thing, for anyone familiar with Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey

The love interest is a lieutenant-colonel Bowen (the story is set in the last year of WWI), wounded in action, D.S.O., M.C. now working at the staff

Of course the story and characters are different in several ways, and they are not as charming as Sayers', but the coincidences, the coincidences!

2- The Lonely House (1920) by Marie Belloc Lowndes (sister of Hillaire Belloc)

What I didn't know before downloading this book, is that it is subtitled A Hercules Popeau mystery. Yes, you guessed it, Poirot. But it predates Poirot for a little. The wikipedia page on Poirot puts it this way:

But to say that the name was derived is to understate the situation immensely. Popeau has the physical shape, age, and way of talking and dressing of Poirot. Like Poiret, he's French (though still living in France; the plot of this story happens on a vacation he takes to Monte Carlo with... you won't guess... his friend captain Angus Stuart. A Scottish man, who, believe it or not, falls in love at first sight with our fair protagonist!).

Jules Poiret. Hercule Popeau. Hercule Poirot.

And like, wow, we complain about fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, but if you were into reading many novels in 1920s Britain, there were THREE eccentric, short, plump, dandy-ish, French speaking, British captain adopting sleuths around. We'd have three nickels. Historians 1000 years from now would believe there was a significant number of French and Belgian sleuths traveling England and Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

The unabridged/uncensored version of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (because it isn't on Project Gutenberg)

PDF text:

Librivox audiobook:

My breakdown of the differences between the censored and uncensored editions, chapter by chapter:

Part 1 (chapters 1-27) Part 2 (chapters 28-38) Part 3 (chapters 39-53)

I have said good things about Verena in the Midst, by E.V. Lucas. His Advisory Ben is EVEN BETTER. I read it today in about two sittings (had doctor's waiting room time to burn) and I finished it with a smile and that sweet glow that finishing a satisfying book gives.

Ben is short for Benita, an efficient, level headed young woman of 22, whose father, a very fussy man, has just remarried. Ben sees this as the moment to leave home and get a job. During a visit to a country family desperate to find a shaker in the middle of nowhere, Ben conceives the idea of setting up an agency to run errands for country people, and generally orient and advice. She leases a place on top of a used books shop, just recently set up by two WWI veterans (the novel is set in the 1920s), gets herself an assistant and an errand boy, and sets up to work.

Like Verena in the Midst, this is another solid light short novel, but this one has much more of a plot. It's also funnier. It has a love triangle that didn't make me cringe. Ben's work is so interesting, and the people that come to her for help and her relatives are also fun and quirky in their own ways. It has a proposal scene that lands.

Verena in the Midst made me want a radio drama. This one made me want a movie.

Maybe producing companies should just hire someone to peruse public domain works instead of so many remakes and sequels.

Anyways, neither will change your life, but I do think the public here would enjoy either or both.

People judging reading ability and bookworm status through how fast a person goes through books is as if how much of a foodie you are was determined by how many pie eating contests have you won.

I had seen posts in appreciation of mass market paperbacks, and while I wholeheartedly shared the sentiment, I didn't fully understand the need for those posts. Don't we all love cheap books you can carry anywhere and bend and chuck and such?

Well, I went to the bookstore to find presents for my niece and nephew, and I finally got it. Rows upon rows of classics on pretty, heavy, full illustrated color covers... and it hit me how those are being sold not as books but as pretty things to look at and show off. A print of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with an almost cute caricature Helen, on a white and green background. The kind of book that would get tarnished by just sliding it across a table. Little Women. Tom Sawyer. Around the World in 80 Days. The list goes on. IDK. Maybe this is super pretentious and snobbish of me, but I find it disturbing.

Nothing wrong with pretty covers and nice hardbacks per se; but there is a line, subtle, but it is there, between a pretty book that is still meant to be read, and a book that is clearly being marketed exclusively on the aesthetic value of an edition, for which the content could be Lorem Ipsum for all the publishing cares. I'd even say nothing wrong with the latter if it wasn't that this bookstore (and I assume this is a general trend) has them displayed not as a sort of collectors/fan item, but as the main and sometimes only versions available.

I'm really sorry, lately it's taking me a while to answer asks :(

I want to make a full guide on Gaskell at some point... when I have finished reading her work. The fact that I haven't read, for example, Mary Barton or Sylvia's Lovers yet influences my recommendations (but of course anyone who has read them can chime in!)

A lot of people, I daresay most, begin Gaskell by North and South, mostly because the 2004 series is very famous and beloved, so they watch it and go for the book. And probably don't read anything by her again because they are disappointed.

I don't think it's the absolute worst place to begin (Ruth would probably be it; it's a very heavy, tragic, sad novel, a blunt social commentary with some reminiscences of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but not with the dexterity that one has), but it's not a good one; the whole process of writing the book and finishing it was plagued by Dickens being jealous and bothersome, which ended up producing some uneven pacing and dei ex machina. Besides that, it sits in a weird spot where it is too bleak for The Austen ReaderTM but not Gothic enough for The Brontë ReaderTM.

The thing with Gaskell is that she was a prolific author who tried her hand at different genres and subgenres, ad who wrote short stories, novellas, and novels. Where to start will depend a lot on what are you the most interested in reading.

If you want something sort of like Austen, the best bet to get an idea of her style and the tone of her lighter work is Mr Harrison's Confessions. It's a fun, cliche story. If you want to commit to a novel, Wives and Daughters is also light and "austenesque", and vastly considered her best work. It is unfinished, but unfinished very, very close to the end (only the last wrap up of the wrap up is missing, but even then most editions carry an editor's note with an explanation of the general idea of what Gaskell had planned for that before she died).

Six Weeks at Happenheim is a bucolic story set in Germany, about a man recovering from illness.

Cranford is more of a bridge novel, also short-ish, between the lighter and the more melancholy, mournful type of story (such as My Lady Ludlow or Cousin Phillis) of reminiscence she used to write.

The 2007 Cranford series is a mash up of Cranford, My Lady Ludlow, and Mr Harrison's Confessions.

Gaskell also wrote several Gothic stories; I haven't read many of those, but I can recommend The Doom of the Griffiths and Lois the Witch as good examples.

She also wrote what I think was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë, titled The Life of Charlotte Brontë. I got this one as a present this Christmas and it is the next work of hers I intend to read!

So... where to start with Gaskell? Another important thing to keep in mind is that, as a writer, she takes her time to set the mood. She likes her purple prose, and you need to slow down to her pace, specially in her novels. So if you had a hard time with, for example, the rhythm of Jane Eyre, perhaps trying a shorter story first to see how you jive with her style of writing can be a good idea.

In short: if you want more of a Austen-y mood, try either Mr Harrison's Confessions or Wives and Daughters.

If you want more of a mix of humor and melancholy, like a distant cousin to the tone of Sense and Sensibility, try Cranford. Also try Cranford if you think stories about old ladies matter!

If you want to read her most famous work at this point, do try North and South. Just don't take it as completely representative of all her work or her talent as a writer. It is a good representation of the social aspect of her novels, and I have heard very often that it is an interesting complement/contrast with Mary Barton (which was her first novel).

If you want some Gothic goodness, start by The Doom of the Griffiths.

THATSCARLETFLYCATCHER'S 1000 FOLLOWERS CELEBRATION

North and South (1854) by Elizabeth Gaskell, as requested by @fictionadventurer

(click on the picture to enlarge for sharper definition)

The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Gaskell, part 3

Far on in the night there were voices outside reached us in our hiding-place; an angry knocking at the door, and we saw through the chinks the old woman rouse herself up to go and open it for her master, who came in, evidently half drunk.  To my sick horror, he was followed by Lefebvre, apparently as sober and wily as ever. They were talking together as they came in, disputing about something; but the miller stopped the conversation to swear at the old woman for having fallen asleep, and, with tipsy anger, and even with blows, drove the poor old creature out of the kitchen to bed.  Then he and Lefebvre went on talking - about the Sieur de Poissy's disappearance.  It seemed that Lefebvre had been out all day, along with other of my husband's men, ostensibly assisting in the search; in all probability trying to blind the Sieur de Poissy's followers by putting them on a wrong scent, and also, I fancied, from one or two of Lefebvre's sly questions, combining the hidden purpose of discovering us.  

The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 2

A Norman woman, Amante by name, was sent to Les Rochers by the Paris milliner, to become my maid.  She was tall and handsome, though upwards of forty, and somewhat gaunt.  But, on first seeing her, I liked her; she was neither rude nor familiar in her manners, and had a pleasant look of straightforwardness about her that I had missed in all the inhabitants of the château, and had foolishly set down in my own mind as a national want. Amante was directed by M. de la Tourelle to sit in my boudoir, and to be always within call.  He also gave her many instructions as to her duties in matters which, perhaps, strictly belonged to my department of management.  But I was young and inexperienced, and thankful to be spared any responsibility. 

The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 1

There is a mill by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany.  There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill; it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg.  The river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle.  Again, further from the river, there is a garden full of willows, and arbours, and flower-beds not well kept, but very profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the arbours together.  In each of these arbours is a stationary table of white painted wood, and light moveable chairs of the same colour and material. 

Lois the Witch (1859) by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 3

'The Sin of Witchcraft.' We read about it, we look on it from  the outside; but we can hardly realise the terror it induced.  Every impulsive or unaccustomed action, every little nervous  affection, every ache or pain was noticed, not merely by those  around the sufferer, but by the person himself, whoever he  might be, that was acting, or being acted upon, in any but the  most simple and ordinary manner.  He or she (for it was most  frequently a woman or girl that was the supposed subject) felt  a desire for some unusual kind of food - some unusual motion  or rest - her hand twitched, her foot was asleep, or her leg had  the cramp; and the dreadful question immediately suggested  itself, 'Is any one possessing an evil power over me; by the  help of Satan?' and perhaps they went on to think, 'It is bad  enough to feel that my body can be made to suffer through the  power of some unknown evil-wisher to me; but what if Satan  gives them still further power, and they can touch my soul,  and inspire me with loathful thoughts leading me into crimes  which at present I abhor?' and so on, till the very dread of  what might happen, and the constant dwelling of the thoughts, even with horror, upon certain possibilities, or what were esteemed such, really brought about the corruption of imagination at last, which at first they had shuddered at. Moreover, there was a sort of uncertainty as to who might be infected - not unlike the overpowering dread of the plague, which made some shrink from their best-beloved with irrepressible fear.  The brother or sister, who was the dearest friend of their childhood and youth, might now be bound in some mysterious deadly pact with evil spirits of the most horrible kind - who could tell?  And in such a case it became a duty, a sacred duty, to give up the earthly body which had been once so loved, but which was now the habitation of a soul corrupt and horrible in its evil inclinations.  Possibly, terror of death might bring on confession, and repentance, and purification.  Or if it did not, why, away with the evil creature, the witch, out of the world, down to the kingdom of the master, whose bidding was done on earth in all manner of corruption and torture of God's creatures!  There were others who, to these more simple, if more ignorant, feelings of horror at witches and witchcraft, added the desire, conscious or unconscious, of revenge on those whose conduct had been in any way displeasing to them.  Where evidence takes a supernatural character, there is no disproving it.  This argument comes up: 'You have only the natural powers; I have supernatural.  You admit the existence of the supernatural by the condemnation of this very crime of witchcraft.  You hardly know the limits of the natural powers; how, then, can you define the supernatural?  I say that in the dead of night, when my body seemed to all present to be lying in quiet sleep, I was, in the most complete and wakeful consciousness, present in my body at an assembly of witches and wizards, with Satan at their head; that I was by them tortured in my body, because my soul would not acknowledge him as its king; and that I witnessed such and such deeds.  What the nature of the appearance was that took the semblance of myself, sleeping quietly in my bed, I know not; but, admitting, as you do, the possibility of witchcraft, you cannot disprove my evidence.' The evidence might be given truly or falsely, as the person witnessing believed it or not; but every one must see what immense and terrible power was abroad for revenge.  Then, again, the accused themselves ministered to the horrible panic abroad.  Some, in dread of death, confessed from cowardice to the imaginary crimes of which they were accused, and of which they were promised a pardon on confession.  Some, weak and terrified, came honestly to believe in their own guilt, through the diseases of imagination which were sure to be engendered at such a time as this. 

Lois the Witch (1859) by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 2

It was hard work for Lois to win herself a place in this family. Her aunt was a woman of narrow, strong affections.  Her love for her husband, if ever she had any, was burnt out and dead long ago.  What she did for him, she did from duty; but duty was not strong enough to restrain that little member, the tongue; and Lois's heart often bled at the continual flow of contemptuous reproof which Grace constantly addressed to her husband, even while she was sparing no pains or trouble to minister to his bodily case and comfort.  It was more as a relief to herself that she spoke in this way, than with any desire that her speeches should affect him; and he was too deadened by illness to feel hurt by them; or, it may be, the constant repetition of her sarcasms had made him indifferent; at any rate, so that he had his food and his state of bodily warmth attended to, he very seldom seemed to care much for anything else.  Even his first flow of affection towards Lois was soon exhausted; he cared for her, because she arranged his pillows well and skilfully, and because she could prepare new and dainty kinds of food for his sick appetite, but no longer for her as his dead sister's child.  Still he did care for her, and Lois was too glad of his little hoard of affection to examine how or why  it was given.  To him she could give pleasure, but apparently to  no one else in that household.  Her aunt looked askance at her  for many reasons: the first coming of Lois to Salem was  inopportune; the expression of disapprobation on her face on  that evening still lingered and rankled in Grace's memory; early  prejudices, and feelings, and prepossessions of the English girl  were all on the side of what would now be called Church and  State, what was then esteemed in that country a superstitious  observance of the directions of a Popish rubric, and a servile  regard for the family of an oppressing and irreligious king.  Nor  is it to be supposed that Lois did not feel, and feel acutely, the  want of sympathy that all those with whom she was now living  manifested towards the old hereditary loyalty (religious as well  as political loyalty) in which she had been brought up.  With her  aunt and Manasseh it was more than want of sympathy; it was  positive, active antipathy to all the ideas Lois held most dear.  The very allusion, however incidentally made, to the little old  grey church at Barford, where her father had preached so long  - the occasional reference to the troubles in which her own  country had been distracted when she left - and the adherence,  in which she had been brought up, to the notion that the king  could do no wrong, seemed to irritate Manasseh past endurance.  He would get up from his reading, his constant employment when at home, and walk angrily about the room after  Lois had said anything of this kind, muttering to himself; and  once he had even stopped before her, and in a passionate tone  bade her not talk so like a fool.  Now this was very different to  his mother's sarcastic, contemptuous way of treating all poor  Lois's little loyal speeches.  Grace would lead her on - at least  she did at first, till experience made Lois wiser - to express her  thoughts on such subjects, till, just when the girl's heart was  opening, her aunt would turn round upon her with some bitter  sneer that roused all the evil feelings in Lois's disposition by its  sting.  Now Manasseh seemed, through all his anger, to be so  really grieved by what he considered her error, that he went  much nearer to convincing her that there might be two sides to  a question.  Only this was a view that it appeared like treachery  to her dead father's memory to entertain.

Lois the Witch (1859) by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 1

In the year 1691, Lois Barclay stood on a little wooden pier, steadying herself on the stable land, in much the same manner as, eight or nine weeks ago, she had tried to steady herself on the deck of the rocking ship which had carried her across from Old to New England.  It seemed as strange now to be on solid earth as it had been, not long ago, to be rocked by the sea both by day and by night; and the aspect of the land was equally strange.  The forests which showed in the distance all around, and which, in truth, were not very far from the wooden houses forming the town of Boston, were of different shades of green, and different, too, in shape of outline to those which Lois Barclay knew well in her old home in Warwickshire.  Her heart sank a little as she stood alone, waiting for the captain of the good ship Redemption, the kind, rough old sailor, who was her only known friend in this unknown continent.  Captain Holdernesse was busy, however, as she saw, and it would probably be some time before he would be ready to attend to her; so Lois sat down on one of the casks that lay about, and wrapped her grey duffle cloak tight around her, and sheltered herself under her hood, as well as might be, from the piercing wind, which seemed to follow those whom it had tyrannised over at sea with a dogged wish of still tormenting them on land.  Very patiently did Lois sit there, although she was weary, and shivering with cold; for the day was severe for May, and the Redemption, with store of necessaries and comforts for the Puritan colonists of New England, was the earliest ship that had ventured across the seas.

Curious, if True, by Elizabeth Gaskell

You were formerly so much amused at my pride in my descent from that sister of Calvin's, who married a Whittingham, Dean of Durham, that I doubt if you will be able to enter into the regard for my distinguished relation that has led me to France, in order to examine registers and archives, which, I thought, might enable me to discover collateral descendants of the great reformer, with whom I might call cousins. I shall not tell you of my troubles and adventures in this research; you are not worthy to hear of them; but something so curious befel me one evening last August, that if I had not been perfectly certain I was wide awake, I might have taken it for a dream.