Wives and Daughters

This article is about the novel. For the TV series based on the novel, see Wives and Daughters (1999 TV series).

Wives and Daughters
Title page of the first edition, 1864–1866
AuthorElizabeth Gaskell
LanguageEnglish
GenreRomance novel
PublishedSerialized: August 1864 to January 1866; book 1866
PublisherCornhill Magazine (serial); Smith, Elder and Company, book
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint
Preceded bySylvia's Lovers 

Wives and Daughters, An Every-Day Story is a novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. It was partly written whilst Gaskell was staying with the salon hostess Mary Elizabeth Mohl at her home on the Rue de Bac in Paris.[1] When Mrs Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, it was not quite complete, and the last section was written by Frederick Greenwood.

The story is about Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s.

  1. ^ Patrick Waddington, ‘Mohl, Mary Elizabeth (1793–1883)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2007 accessed 7 Feb 2015