Gaskell's best known work is set in a small rural town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty. But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reappearance of long-lost relatives.

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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë