Cousin Phillis
Elizabeth Gaskell’s tender novella is narrated by young Paul Manning, a railway engineer who, newly posted to the country, grows close to his mother’s relatives at Hope Farm. There he meets his cousin Phillis Holman, a bright and sheltered girl on the edge of womanhood, whose father is both a working farmer and a country minister. When Paul introduces his charming supervisor, Phillis loses her heart, though the young man’s ambitions carry him far away. Set in the rural England of the 1840s, the story unfolds with unhurried grace before turning toward quiet heartbreak and the slow work of recovery. Many readers count it among Gaskell’s finest short fiction. This free PDF and EPUB edition presents the complete text to read at no cost.
About the Author
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was an English novelist and biographer whose fiction ranged across Victorian society from mill towns to country parishes. Remembered for Mary Barton, Cranford, and North and South, she wrote with sympathy for the poor and for women, and produced the first major…
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