Wives and Daughters

Rare in the original, unrestored cloth.

Wives and Daughters was first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. The story of Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in a provincial English town in the 1830s and her ultimate attraction of Roger Hamley, the younger son of the local Squire and her social superior. The final section of the book was unfinished at the time of Gaskell's sudden death in 1865, although she had related to a friend that she intended Roger to return and present Molly with a dried flower (a gift Molly had given him before his departure to Africa), as proof of his enduring love. Frederick Greenwood wrote the last section on these lines. However, in the BBC adaptation of the novel, an alternative ending was written in which Roger finds himself unwilling to leave Molly without speaking to her of his love, and they marry and return to Africa together.

First edition in book form; 2 vols, lge 8vo (230 x 155 mm), with 18 plates by George du Maurier, occasional, marginal spotting, heavier to secondary endpapers, titles and frontispieces of both vols and pp 161-163 in vol. I, the first of these also has two minor, marginal pencil highlights, some quires split but firm, otherwise, the majority of leaves are clean and bright; publisher's burgundy gilt cloth, rubbed and bumped at extremities, minor dust-soiling generally but nothing that is not comesurate with age, in all a very good set; [iv], 336 +10 plates; [iv], 332 +8 plates

Bibliography: Sadleir 936; Wolff 2428