Lois the Witch (Hesperus Classics) - Tapa blanda

'The book, though little, has power. It was written with a skilled hand adept at portraying what beats beneath our fears, beneath our dreams and wants. It also talks of human suffering, pain, love and death. Though short, 'Lois the Witch' is a beautiful Victorian novel, worth savouring for a few more hundred years.' --Linear Reflections

'Elizabeth Gaskell has produced a well-researched tale highlighting the religious bigotry and malicious superstition, which surrounded the Salem Witch Trials. A reading group wishing to indulge in a little known historical classic would find plenty to discuss in this story written one hundred and fifty years ago.' --The Directory

Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch hunts, Elizabeth Gaskell’s somber novella reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America. A God-fearing and honest girl, she has little to concern her in this new life. Yet as she joins her distant family, she finds jealousy and dissension are rife, and her cousins quick to point the finger at the “imposter.” With the whole of Salem gripped by a fear of the supernatural, it seems her new home is where she is in most danger. Lonely and afraid, the words of an old curse return to haunt her. Collaborator and friend of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell is a leading figure in Victorian literature.