The game with literature tradition in “Curious, if true” by Elizabeth Gaskell

The article deals with the short story «Curious, if true» (1860) by Elizabeth Gaskell. The paper discusses why the author whose major literary works were created in realist poetics addressed the genres of fairy tale and gothic story. The research shows that Gaskell purposely used motives and attributes of the gothic literature to demonstrate its artistic bankruptcy in the form of parody. At the same time keeping faith to realism the author draws the reader's attention to socially-determined vices of vanity and snobbism. In the paper the stress is done on the analysis of the game with the reader in the short story, the development of the sequel genre by Gaskell and the blending of different literary genres in the text.