Sylvia's Lovers

Great novel from 1863 by the popular English novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Gaskell, whose writings were frequently questioning Victorian era attitudes, particularly those towards women, with their strong narratives and dynamic female characters. Set in the isolated whaling community of Monkshaven (modelled over Whitby, which Gaskell visited in 1859 for inspiration) during the Napoleonic wars, Sylvia's Lovers is a strange and tragic love story fuelled with a tale of the press-gangs' evil tyranny over the local people. Left penniless after her father's death and believing that her lover Charley Kinraid is dead, Sylvia reluctantly marries her devoted but cunning cousin, Philip Hepburn. When Kinraid, now a wartime hero, unexpectedly returns, the passionate but vulnerable Sylvia breaks under the strain and must choose between her two lovers. A brilliant psychological observer of human behaviour, Elizabeth Gaskell explores how the struggles of ordinary people were instrumental to the making of British history just prior to the turn of the nineteenth century.