‘Bessy’s Troubles at Home’

‘Bessy’s Troubles at Home’ was the second of two stories EG contributed to Travers Madge’s Sunday School Penny Magazine. It was published in four parts from January to April 1852 (n.s.:2, pp. 7–12; 21–4; 41–5; 61–4) (see head-note to ‘Hand and Heart’, p. 99). Like the earlier story it was signed ‘Mrs Gaskell’, the only two of her publications at this time not published anonymously. The tale was written in some haste. EG herself was dismissive of it, commenting to her daughter Marianne in February 1852 that ‘the children who like Bessy’s Troubles are great geese, & no judges at all, which children generally are, for it is complete rubbish I am sorry to say’(Letters, p. 845). She confirmed her judgment several years later, describing it parenthetically as ‘rather good for nothing’ in a letter to another correspondent (Letters, p. 365). Despite these misgivings the story was reprinted, with ‘Hand and Heart’ in paper wrappers in 1855, in a cheap edition intended for young readers, and collected in Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (1855). It was also included in The Grey Woman and Other Tales (1865) in the 1906 Knutsford edition (Knutsford, vol. iii) and in Shorter’s 1913 World’s Classics edition (Shorter, vol. viii).