Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell (
29 September,
1810,
London –
12 November,
1865,
Holybourne,
Hampshire,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland), often referred to simply as
Mrs. Gaskell, was a British
novelist.
She was born
Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in
London in
1810. Her mother, Eliza, the niece of the potter
Josiah Wedgwood, died when she was a child. Her father, William Stevenson, was a
Unitarian minister, and also a writer.
Much of her childhood was spent in
Cheshire, where she lived with an aunt in
Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as
Cranford.
She also spent some time in
Newcastle upon Tyne and
Edinburgh. Her stepmother was a sister of the
Scottish miniature artist,
William John Thomson, who painted a famous portrait of Elizabeth in 1832.
In the same year, she married
William Gaskell, a minister at
Cross Street Unitarian Chapel who had a literary career of his own. They settled in
Manchester where the industrial surroundings would offer inspiration for her novels (in the
industrial novel genre).
The circles in which they moved included religious dissenters and social reformers, including
William and
Mary Howitt.
Mrs. Gaskell's first novel,
Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. The best-known of her remaining novels are
Cranford (1853),
North and South (1854), and
Wives and Daughters (1865). She was a friend of
Charles Dickens, and wrote the first biography of
Charlotte Brontë, which played a significant role in developing her fellow writer's reputation.
She died in
Hampshire,
England,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, aged 55.
Mrs. Gaskell today ranks as one of the most highly-regarded British novelists of the
Victorian era.
With the help of
Charles Dickens,
Gaskell became popular for her writing, especially her
Ghost story writing.
Even though her writing conforms to Victorian Conventions (including signing her name "Mrs. Gaskell"), Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of
Victorian era attitudes, particularly those toward women, with complex narratives and dynamic women characters.
[Excluding Reference to Gaskell's Ghost Stories, Abrams, M.H., et. al. (Eds.) "Elizabeth Gaskell, 1810-1865." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century, 7th ed., Vol. B. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. ISBN 0-393-97304-2. DDC 820.8--dc21. LC PR1109.N6.]Novels
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Mary Barton (1848)
*
Ruth (1853)
*
North and South (1854)
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The Grey Woman (1861)
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Sylvia's Lovers (1863)
*
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)
*
Cranford (1851)
*
Half a Life-Time Ago*
Cousin Phillis (1863)
Collections
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The Moorland Cottage (1850)
*
The Old Nurse's Story (1852)
*
Lizzie Leigh (1855)
*
My Lady Ludlow (1859)
*
Round the Sofa (1859)
*
Lois the Witch (1861)
*
A Dark Night's Work (1863)
Short stories
*
The Half Brothers*
The Squire's Story(1853)
Non-fiction
*
The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)
*
North and South Messageboard*
The Gaskell Web*
Elizabeth Gaskell at Victorian Web*
Free ebook of Elizabeth Gaskell at
Project Gutenberg*
Website of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth*
Elizabeth Gaskell A brief biography*
Cranford and Cousin Phillis This book by Author Elizabeth Gaskel, comedy set against the experience of altering local neighborhood of Cranford.
