Which Novel Was Mrs Gaskell Writing When She Died?

Elizabeth Gaskell died in 1865, without completing her novel "Wives and Daughters." The novel follows the lives of two families, the Hamleys and the Gibsons. Mr Gibson, a widowed surgeon in the small town of Hollingford, remarries to provide his daughter Molly with a mother. Molly dislikes her stepmother but grows fond of her stepsister, Cynthia. Later, however, both girls are attracted to Roger Hamley, younger son of the Squire and a committed scientist. Roger becomes engaged to Cynthia and goes off on an expedition to Africa; later she abandons him for someone else, and he turns to Molly, who loves him. Meanwhile Osborne, Roger's elder brother, has died, leaving an infant son by a secret marriage; his father adopts the child. It is not known how Gaskell intended the novel to end; Andrew Davies has adapted it for the BBC, with an ending of his own. Despite the lack of an endi