Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Round the Sofa (1859). by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

Round the Sofa is an 1859 2-volume collection consisting of a novel with a story preface and five short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell. The two volumes were published by Sampson Low, Son & Co. in London. The 1859 2-volume set is unillustrated. The first volume consists of the novel My Lady Ludlow prefaced by a short story Round the Sofa, which is used to provide a framework for the telling of My Lady Ludlow and the disparate stories. Mrs. Dawson tells the story of "My Lady Ludlow" and then five other narrators gathered around the sofa each tell a story. The second volume consists of the short stories An Accursed Race, The Doom of the Griffiths, Half a Life-time Ago, The Poor Clare, and The Half-Brothers. The novel and three of the short stories were first published in Household Words. The Doom of the Griffiths was first published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in January 1858. The Half-Brothers was first published in The Dublin University Magazine in November 1858. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, (née Stevenson; 29 September 1810 - 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Brontë. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851-53), North and South (1854-55), and Wives and Daughters (1865).