Lori's Reviews > Wives and Daughters

Oh. MY. WORD.

This is, in every sense of the phrase, the never-ending story.

I had been wanting to see the BBC's film version of this book for years, but never got around to it. In a story too complicated to explain, I was not able to get the video, so decided I'd try to read the book instead.

The book is 60 chapters long. SIXTY. 650 pages. The first two slow chapters made me return the book to the library. But the story kept nagging at me, so a few months later, I tried again. The story definitely becomes more interesting after chapter two.

But about 150 pages into the story, I was finally able to watch the video... and it was wonderful. With 150 pages of reading already invested, I decided I'd keep going. The movie proved that the story was a good one, and I was looking forward to additional information that books always seem to contain.

So on I went. And nearing the last few paragraphs of the sixtieth chapter, I started wondering why the story wasn't anywhere near its finish.

Let "A Note on the Text" from the last pages of the (35 page!!!) introduction speak to this:

"Wives and Daughters was first published in eighteen monthly parts in the Cornhill Magazine from August 1864 to January 1866. The Cornhill publishers, Smith and Elder, issued the novel in two-volume form at the end of serialization, Elizabeth Gaskell having died in 1865, just BEFORE COMPLETING THE STORY." (Emphasis mine.)

The Cornhill editor kindly TELLS the reader of what Gaskell intended to write in the sixty-first and final chapter. But it just isn't the same.

Thank you BBC for just writing the rest of the story into the screenplay.

And AAAARRRRGH! to myself - because if 650 pages isn't enough to qualify something as the never-ending story, the missing sixty-first chapter certainly is.