Cousin Phillis

Written by Elizabeth Gaskell

Narrated by Joe Marsh

Cousin Phillis – a miniature masterpiece – is set in the 1840s, when the coming of the railway was changing the face of England, and quiet rural communities, coming into contact with the outside world, were changed for ever. The story focuses on the effect these changes have on a naïve country girl, Phillis, as she encounters love, with all its pains and pleasures, for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
• Release date: May 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9789629549619

Elizabeth Gaskell

Mrs Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson in London in 1810. Her mother Eliza, the niece of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, died when she was a child. Much of her childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with an aunt at Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as Cranford. In 1832, she married a Unitarian minister, William Gaskell (who had a literary career of his own), and they settled in Manchester. The industrial surroundings offered her inspiration for her novels. Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. The best-known of her other novels are Cranford (1853) and North and South (1855). Elizabeth met Charlotte Brontë in 1850, and they struck up a great friendship. After Charlotte's death in 1855, her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography to counteract gossip and speculation. The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857. Gaskell was also a skilled proponent of the ghost story. Her last novel, Wives and Daughters, said by many to be her most mature work remained unfinished at the time of her death in 1865.

Reviews for Cousin Phillis

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An older man recounts an instance in his youth when he became fast friends with a local pious family. But in introducing them to his charming boss, he inadvertently causes teenaged Phillis romantic agony. Like Gaskell's other work, this is a slow-paced tale focused on the minutia of a small community's daily lives and feelings. Unlike the other work I've read by her, this has a section in which a woman swoons after hearing her crush has gotten married, and then nearly dies of brain fever (whatever that might be) and stays near death for months. It was so melodramatic and inexplicable to me that it tainted my enjoyment of the earlier section of the novel.

[Debbie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I've never read a book that ended so suddenly....seems weird and unfinished.

[fliss88_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a little while to get in-sync with the language of this book, never having read anything by Elizabeth Gaskell before and it originally being published in 1864. But once I discovered the secret, that is, to slow down my reading speed and let the words, and the vocabulary start to work their magic, I was able to sit back and thoroughly enjoy this lovely book. Back in the day, of no technology as we now know it, words were the way of things. People spoke slower, used many more words and seemed to think more carefully about how they said things…... and it's fantastic once you lose yourself to it!

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Klett gives another wonderful narration in this free Librivox recording. The story itself I found a bit dated: brain fever? I wonder what illness this actually was! I liked Phillis (this is the spelling used in my Project Gutenberg Kindle edition) and her father.

[elisantiesteban_4738 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The recording finishes one chapter short of the end. I hope they fix it