The complete online text of Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell.

The English author Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) wrote sociological novels that explored the ills of industrial England and novels of small-town life that are penetrating studies of character. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born on Sept. 29, 1810. Her...

A recent review of Mrs. Gaskell's critical reputation divided her critics into three camps. One group, now fading, still treats her mainly as the author of Cranford (1853). A second emphasizes her "social-problem" novels but insists that they be regarded...

For some critics Elizabeth Gaskell was a conventional, middle-class Victorian wife and mother who accepted the values of her world and who also happened to write books--a feminine dove among literary eagles Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, to borr...

The 91-year-old daughter of Babe Ruth hopes the federal indictment of home run king Barry Bonds will allow people to focus on what's important: baseball."I feel bad for Bonds," Julia Ruth Stevens said Thursday by telephone from her winter home in Arizona. "The fact is,...

Ruth Graham, who surrendered dreams of missionary work in Tibet to marry a suitor who became the world's most renowned evangelist, died Thursday. She was 87. Graham died at 5:05 p.m. at her home at Little Piney Cove, surrounded by her husband and all five...

Reflecting her simple tastes, a plywood casket carried Ruth Bell Graham through the streets of her mountainside home Saturday as mourners gathered to remember the wife of evangelist Billy Graham.Ruth Graham died Thursday at the age of 87, following a lengthy illness that left her...

On a recent visit to Ruth and Billy Graham's beloved home in the western North Carolina mountains, her local pastor recalled, the world's most renowned evangelist fumbled the words to the 23rd Psalm _ one of his wife's favorites.As she had so many times before,...