Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Lizzie Leigh
    Lizzie Leigh
    Lizzie Leigh
    Ebook66 pages56 minutes

    Lizzie Leigh

    By Elizabeth Gaskell

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateApr 1, 2001
    Lizzie Leigh
    Author

    Elizabeth Gaskell

    Elizabeth Gaskell was an English author and poet, and is best-known for her classic novels Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters. Gaskell was a contemporary and an associate of many other early nineteenth-century writers, including Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charlotte Bronte, and was commissioned by Bronte’s father upon the author’s death to write her biography, The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Gaskell died in 1865 at the age of 55.

    Read more from Elizabeth Gaskell

    Related to Lizzie Leigh

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Elsi, The Strange Maid

      Aug 29, 2018

      Elsi, The Strange Maid
      17 min read

    • Article

      Helen

      Jun 5, 2023

      She was a friend of my family—the Carlins, as I have chosen to call them. She and my father met in the fifties through the editor of the architecture magazine where she began her career. My father had taken her out a few times. They were never lovers

      30 min read

    • Article

      Lost Children

      Aug 4, 2022

      Lost Children
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Stackpole Legend

      Mar 1, 2024

      The Stackpole Legend
      13 min read

    • Article

      Elise Juska on Finally Learning the True Story of Her Namesake

      Jun 12, 2019

      The novelist on her grandfather's very unusual relationship arrangement—a 52-year engagement—and how it led, in a roundabout way, to her own name. The post Elise Juska on Finally Learning the True Story of Her Namesake appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      THE BLACK SPIDER Part Two

      Oct 30, 2019

      THE BLACK SPIDER Part Two
      25 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Guide

      Jan 2, 2022

      Summer Reading Guide
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tante’s Tales

      Oct 5, 2021

      Tante’s Tales
      3 min read

    • Article

      Spellbinding Reads

      Nov 11, 2022

      READ THIS BY RACHEL JOYCE DOUBLEDAY In The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the title character set off on foot on his unlikely trek across England to find his old friend Queenie Hennessy, while 1his embittered and grieving wife, Maureen, was le

      3 min read

    • Article

      L. R.

      Dec 6, 2022

      L. R.
      25 min read

    • Article

      A Consent (1908)

      Jul 1, 2022

      A Consent (1908)
      19 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 17, 2023

      Books
      4 min read

    • Article

      Partial Truths

      Aug 6, 2020

      Partial Truths
      10 min read

    • Article

      Left To Lose

      Jul 10, 2022

      Around the time she gives up her name, it starts to feel like this entire revolution isn’t worth it anymore. The world is probably lucky that Kelian—she still remembers Kelian, in spite of everything—is there to pick up the pieces, the way he always

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 251

      Mar 15, 2022

      The Art of Fiction No. 251
      20 min read

    • Article

      Nights When Nothing Happened

      Nov 6, 2020

      Nights When Nothing Happened
      9 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Aug 19, 2022

      Books
      4 min read

    • Article

      Betrothal at Blenheim

      Feb 5, 2020

      Betrothal at Blenheim
      5 min read

    • Article

      Snow Maiden

      Jan 1, 2024

      Snow Maiden
      8 min read

    • Article

      Untold Resilience

      Dec 6, 2020

      I was 16, he was 20 and Leslie was the first person I ever fell in love with. It’s difficult to try to describe the intensity of emotions in regard to relationships during that period. Those times were different; we were so aware of the horrors of wa

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Last Waylon Party

      Jan 18, 2019

      The Last Waylon Party
      14 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      May 18, 2022

      Great Read
      5 min read

    • Article

      Are You Lonesome Tonight?

      Aug 8, 2019

      Are You Lonesome Tonight?
      6 min read

    Reviews for Lizzie Leigh

    3/5

    1 rating1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      “Lizzie Leigh” is one of Elizabeth Gaskell’s short stories. I found this a little depressing and at times somewhat melodramatic. The title character is not the heroine of the piece. She is a fallen woman, as such females were known in the 1800s. Her reason for “falling” is because she had a child out of wedlock. She’s also a missing person, which forms the basic plot of this tale, as her mother and reluctant brother leave their farm to search for Lizzie in Manchester.

    Book preview

    Lizzie Leigh - Elizabeth Gaskell

    Lizzie Leigh, by Elizabeth Gaskell

    The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lizzie Leigh, by Elizabeth Gaskell

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Lizzie Leigh

    Author: Elizabeth Gaskell

    Release Date: May 16, 2005 [eBook #2521]

    Language: English

    Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

    ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIZZIE LEIGH***

    Transcribed from the 1896 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.

    LIZZIE LEIGH

    by Elizabeth Gaskell

    CHAPTER I.

    When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often been, gives a poignancy to sorrow—a more utter blankness to the desolation.  James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836.  A few minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had yet something to say.  She stooped close down, and caught the broken whisper, I forgive her, Annie!  May God forgive me!

    Oh, my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my thanks for those words.  May God in heaven bless thee for saying them.  Thou’rt not so restless, my lad! may be—Oh, God!

    For even while she spoke he died.

    They had been two-and-twenty years man and wife; for nineteen of those years their life had been as calm and happy as the most perfect uprightness on the one side, and the most complete confidence and loving submission on the other, could make it.  Milton’s famous line might have been framed and hung up as the rule of their married life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible.  But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up the old landmarks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest love and reverence had once been for ever springing.

    But those last blessed words replaced him on his throne in her heart, and called out penitent anguish for all the bitter estrangement of later years.  It was this which made her refuse all the entreaties of her sons, that she would see the kind-hearted neighbours, who called on their way from church, to sympathize and condole.  No! she would stay with the dead husband that had spoken tenderly at last, if for three years he had kept silence; who knew but what, if she had only been more gentle and less angrily reserved he might have relented earlier—and in time?

    She sat rocking herself to and fro by the side of the bed, while the footsteps below went in and out; she had been in sorrow too long to have any violent burst of deep grief now; the furrows were well worn in her cheeks, and the tears flowed quietly, if incessantly, all the day long.  But when the winter’s night drew on, and the neighbours had gone away to their homes, she stole to the window, and gazed out, long and wistfully, over the dark grey moors.  She did not hear her son’s voice, as he spoke to her from the door, nor his footstep as he drew nearer.  She started when he touched her.

    Mother! come down to us.  There’s no one but Will and me.  Dearest mother, we do so want you.  The poor lad’s voice trembled, and he began to cry.  It appeared to require an effort on Mrs. Leigh’s part to tear herself away from the window, but with a sigh she complied with his request.

    The two boys (for though Will was nearly twenty-one, she still thought of him as a lad) had done everything in their power to make the house-place comfortable for her.  She herself, in the old days before her sorrow, had never made a brighter fire or a cleaner hearth, ready for her husband’s return home, than now awaited her.  The tea-things were all put out, and the kettle was boiling; and the boys had calmed their grief down into a kind of sober cheerfulness.  They paid her every attention they

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1