The Old Nurse's Story is a ghost tale by Elizabeth Gaskell. Little Miss Rosamond her loving nurse move into an old mansion. Very soon it becomes clear that there are secrets to be discovered, strange nocturnal sounds and spooky shapes moving about.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Some of Gaskell’s best known novels are Cranford, North and South and Wives and Daughters.

‘The Old Nurse’s Story and Other Tales’ is a collection of eleven short stories from the much-loved Victorian author, Elizabeth Gaskell. The title story follows the strange and supernatural happenings which have affected four generations of the Furnivall family, who live in a spooky gothic mansion in the midst of a bleak and deserted moorland. A haunting and atmospheric collection of spooky short stories, which fans of Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw’ will also enjoy. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) is an enduringly popular and highly regarded English novelist. Born in Chelsea, London, Elizabeth was sent to live with her aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire after her mother died, a place which would provide inspiration for some of her most popular works, including ‘Cranford’. A sociable and lively young woman, Elizabeth married Minister William Gaskell in 1832 and settled in Manchester. An industrial hub and the scene of much political and social change, her time in Manchester influenced much of her writing. Her first novel, ‘Mary Barton’ focussed on the appalling and impoverished living conditions of those living in Northern industrial cities and was a huge success, sparking the interest of notable figures such as Charles Dickens, who invited Elizabeth to contribute to the periodicals he edited. An active humanitarian, her works dealt sympathetically with the plight of the poorest in society, and she did not shy away from controversial topics such as prostitution and illegitimacy. A close friend of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth also wrote a highly acclaimed biography of the author in 1857. Some of her best known and most loved novels include ‘Cranford’, ‘North and South’ and the posthumously published ‘Wives and Daughters’, all of which have been adapted for TV by the BBC, most recently ‘Cranford’ starring Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, and Greg Wise. Elizabeth Gaskell is regarded as one of the most important novelists of the Victorian era.

A collection of compelling stories that includes the first-prize winner in the 1999 O. Henry Awards

Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud owners of a near-derelict croft house—a farmer’s stone cottage—on “a small acre” of land. Mary assumed duties as the island’s district nurse. Call the Nurse is her account of the enchanted years she and her family spent there, coming to know its folk as both patients and friends. In anecdotes that are by turns funny, sad, moving, and tragic, she recalls them all, the crofters and their laird, the boatmen and tradesmen, young lovers and forbidding churchmen. Against the old-fashioned island culture and the grandeur of mountain and sea unfold indelible stories: a young woman carried through snow for airlift to the hospital; a rescue by boat; the marriage of a gentle giant and the island beauty; a ghostly encounter; the shocking discovery of a woman in chains; the flames of a heather fire at night; an unexploded bomb from World War II; and the joyful, tipsy celebration of a ceilidh. Gaelic fortitude meets a nurse’s compassion in these wonderful true stories from rural Scotland.

Cousin Phillis (1864) is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It was published in four parts, though a fifth and sixth part were planned. The story is about 19-year-old Paul Manning, [A 1] who moves to the country and befriends his mother's family and his (second) cousin Phillis Holman, who is confused by her own placement at the edge of adolescence. Most critics agree that Cousin Phillis is Gaskell's crowning achievement in the short novel. The story is uncomplicated; its virtues are in the manner of its development and telling. Cousin Phillis is also recognized as a fitting prelude for Gaskell's final and most widely acclaimed novel, Wives and Daughters, which ran in Cornhill Magazine from August 1864 to January 1866. Characters: Paul Manning (the narrator, Phillis's cousin) Mr Manning (Paul's father) Mr Edward Holdsworth Mr Holman (independent church minister) Mrs Holman Miss Phillis Holman Mr Ellison (Mr Manning's business partner) Miss Lucille Ventadur (at last Mr Holdsworth's wife) Betty (the servant at Holman house) Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, (nee Stevenson; 29 September 1810 - 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte, published in 1857, was the first biography of Bronte. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851-53), North and South (1854-55), and Wives and Daughters (1865). Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on 29 September 1810 in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, at the house which is now 93 Cheyne Walk. She was the youngest of eight children; only she and her brother John survived infancy. Her father, William Stevenson, a Unitarian from Berwick-upon-Tweed, was minister at Failsworth, Lancashire, but resigned his orders on conscientious grounds and moved to London in 1806 with the intention of going to India after he was appointed private secretary to the Earl of Lauderdale, who was to become Governor General of India. That position did not materialise, however, and instead Stevenson was nominated Keeper of the Treasury Records. His wife, Elizabeth Holland, came from a family from the English Midlands that was connected with other prominent Unitarian families, including the Wedgwoods, the Martineaus, the Turners and the Darwins. When she died 13 months after giving birth to her youngest daughter, she left a bewildered husband who saw no alternative for Elizabeth but to be sent to live with her mother's sister, Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire. While she was growing up, Elizabeth's future was uncertain, as she had no personal wealth and no firm home, though she was a permanent guest at her aunt and grandparents' house. Her father married Catherine Thomson in 1814 and they had a son, William (born 1815), and a daughter, Catherine (born 1816). Although Elizabeth spent several years without seeing her father, to whom she was devoted, her older brother John often visited her in Knutsford. John was destined for the Royal Navy from an early age, like his grandfathers and uncles, but he had no entry and had to join the Merchant Navy with the East India Company's fleet. John went missing in 1827 during an expedition to India.......

In the 1950s, nurses served as handmaidens to the physician; by the start of the new millennium, they had become admired independent practitioners. Nightingale Tales is a peek into that transition, as told by a nurse who lived it. Each chapter is a stand-alone story depicting the ridiculous mores nurses have been subjected to over the years, the archaic equipment they’ve had to struggle with, and the changes in the profession, brought about by time, the feminist movement, and advances in technology. Told with humor and compassion, the stories of Nightingale Tales provides an unusual—and highly entertaining—window into the world of medicine from the mid-twentieth century to the present.