Doors open 6pm, event starts 6.15pm. Free, book here.

“To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl, wide awake and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen power in the next room….”

How could you not be entranced?!

This is the opening paragraph of Elizabeth Gaskell’s last and, many think, her greatest novel - Wives & Daughters. The Never-Read-a-Gaskell Group had actually read quite a few Gaskell books by the time Covid hit at the end of 2019 - but we were saving this one and I can assure you, it’s worth the wait. As Chair of The Gaskell Society, I must confess it is my absolute favourite and I’m in good company - it was the favourite novel of Charles Darwin and it was the last novel he had read aloud to him before he died.

The story of young Molly Gibson and her beloved widowed doctor father and the many people with whom their lives entwine, is one of the greatest novels of the Victorian age.

Come and discuss it with Libby Tempest (Chair of the Gaskell Society) and other like-minded readers…