Elizabeth Gaskell, 1851, pastel drawing by George Richmond. Public domain image.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865). A popular and successful English novelist and short story writer of the early Victorian era. She was a prolific author and wrote on a wide variety of subjects, but is perhaps best known as a critic of industrial society and social protest novelist, and for her sensitivity to the situation of women. She was born Elizabeth Stevenson, in London, into a Unitarian family. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister, and they moved to Manchester and raised four daughters there, where she too was an active member of the local Unitarian community. Her first stories began to appear in 1847. In 1850 she met Charlotte Brontë and they became friends; she would write a biography of Brontë after her death, at the request of Charlotte's father. Gaskell herself also died suddenly, in 1865, leaving her last novel, Wives and Daughters, unfinished but essentially complete.
Gaskell is noted for her short stories, her innovative biography of Charlotte Brontë, and her novels: Mary Barton: A Story of Manchester Life (1848) [the link is to the first edition]; her beloved novel about spinsters in an English village, Cranford (1853) [later edition, delightful illustrations by Hugh Thomson];
Ruth (1853) [first edition]; a second Manchester novel, North and South (1855); Sylvia's Lovers (1863); Cousin Phyllis (1864); and Wives and Daughters (1866). The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) [Vol. 1, second edition] was published in two volumes by Smith & Elder in 1857; the second edition followed about six weeks after the first. Both editions were withdrawn from sale fifteen days after the second edition was issued because of the threat of law suits from people who appeared in the book.
Uglow, Jenny.
"Band of women: Often silly and stubborn, the ladies in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford stories were also resilient and full of warmth." UK Guardian 3 Nov. 2007.
"Elizabeth Gaskell." Victorian Web, ed. George Landow. Biography, works, and brief coverage of Gaskell's characters, style, and narrative technique.
North and South, a version made for television by the BBC, with video excerpts available.
Billington, Josie. "Elizabeth Gaskell." Literary Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell, from a database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field [subscription service].
