''Lois the Witch and Other Tales'' is an 1861 collection of five stories by Elizabeth Gaskell. The book was published by Bernhard Tauchnitz in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

. The 1861 book's five stories are ''Lois the Witch'' (124 pages), ''The Grey Woman'' (78 pages), ''The Doom of the Griffiths'' (52 pages), ''The Half-Brothers'' (20 pages), and ''The Crooked Branch'' (63 pages). ''Lois the Witch'' is a long short story or novella of historical fiction, which first appeared in 3 parts in October 1859 in the weekly '' All the Year Round'' edited by Charles Dickens. The story's protagonist, Lois Barclay, is raised in a parsonage in Barford, Warwickshire but as she becomes a young woman, both her parents die. In 1691, she crosses the Atlantic to live with her uncle and his family in

Salem, Massachusetts Salem ( ) is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located on the North Shore of Greater Boston. Continuous settlement by Europeans began in 1626 with English colonists. Salem would become one of the most significant seaports tr ...

and then becomes involved in the

Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom w ...

. The book's second-longest story ''The Grey Woman'' is a Gothic tale of a young woman who, with her lady's maid, escapes from the castle of her rich, but abusive, husband Monsieur de la Tourelle. The stories ''The Doom of the Griffiths'' and ''The Half-Brothers'' were published in the 1859 collection ''

Round the Sofa ''Round the Sofa'' is an 1859 2-volume collection consisting of a novel with a story preface and five short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell. The two volumes were published by Sampson Low, Son & Co. in London. The 1859 2-volume set is unillustrat ...

'' after previous publication in periodicals. ''The Crooked Branch'' was first published as ''The Ghost in the Garden Room'' in the 1859 extra Christmas issue of '' All the Year Round'' as part of the "portmanteau" story ''The Haunted House''. The original manuscripts of ''The Grey Woman'' and ''The Crooked Branch'' are in the Elizabeth Gaskell Manuscript Collection of the

John Rylands Library The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is a Victorian era, late-Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, neo-Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. It is part of the University of Manchester. The library, which opened to t ...

of the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

References

{{Elizabeth Gaskell Short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell 1861 short stories