Elizabeth Gaskell Sylvia's Lovers

Sylvia's Lovers is Elizabeth Gaskell's last completed novel. "The saddest story I ever wrote," Mrs. Gaskell said of Sylvia's Lovers, published in 1863, the absorbing tale of an ordinary girl's tragic passion for a man who disappears after being forcibly pressed into military service. Sylvia's unrequited love results in tragic and painful consequences.

The trail of destruction starts there: within a few years Sylvia has lost a lover, a father, a home, a mother and her husband.

Partly because ...