A Dark Night's Work

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

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Description

Elizabeth Gaskell opens in Hamley, a small county town, where Mr. Wilkins the attorney dines with the gentry his family has served for three generations. His son Edward inherits the practice and the standing, and marries a woman above the family's habits. One dark night, a quarrel in the Wilkins household ends in a killing.

The rest of the novella follows the hiding of that night's work and the long weight it lays on Edward and on Dixon, the loyal servant who shares the secret. A daughter grows up under its shadow. Gaskell, writing in the 1896 collection used here, turns a crime story into a study of guilt eating a respectable life from inside.

Catalog record

CREATORElizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
COLLECTIONBOOKS
FORMATTXT
FILE SIZE363 KB
LICENSEPUBLIC_DOMAIN
RIGHTSPUBLIC DOMAIN
SOURCEProject Gutenberg

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2522

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