Dissembling Fictions : Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Social Text

Rating:
Summary: A new voice for a new era in Gaskell studies
Review: The burgeoning interest in Elizabeth Gaskell has at last produced an author with the cogent prose style and analytical brilliance to match the subject. Brava d'Albertis! It reminds me of the impact of reading Axel's Castle in 1931.

Rating:
Summary: why we love dierdre d'albertis
Review: There aren't enough books about Elizabeth Gaskell. D'Albertis has stunningly filled what heretofore had been a Gaskell void. Yea, Dierdre! This sort of scholarship is rarely seen amongst Victorian scholars, particulalrly female ones. Fabulous!

Rating:
Summary: The critical work to read on Gaskell
Review: This is an excellent, finely tuned study of Gaskell. It investigates Gaskell as an artist caught up in ambivalent, conflicting goals. When so much work on Gaskell flattens her into an unbridled politico, this book traces the complex relationship between her social intentions and her artistic ones. And it reads all the novels but _Cranford_, including the neglected _Sylvia's Lovers_.