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, and her last novel, Wives and Daughters, remained unfinished.

Mrs. Gaskell is noted for her short stories, her innovative biography of Charlotte Brontë, and her novels: Mary Barton: A Story of Manchester Life (1848) [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 following 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 Both editions were withdrawn from sale fifteen days after the second edition was issued because of the threat of law suits.

BIOGRAPHY. 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, to Unitarian parents. Her mother died thirteen months after her birth, and the motherless girl was sent to her aunt, to be raised in the rural village of Knutsford, in Cheshire county. In adulthood, Gaskell always remembered Knutsford as a kind of childhood paradise, and it was Knutsford that was the model for her idyllic portrait of English village life in Cranford. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister, and they moved to Manchester, the center of cotton manufacturing at that time, the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution. There she had three daughters, a son who died at age nine months, and a fourth daughter. To distract herself from her grief over the loss of her little boy, she began to write short stories: her first stories appeared in 1847, and her first novel, Mary Barton: A Story of Manchester Life, in 1848. As one of her biographers has noted, "What made Elizabeth Gaskell's stories of Manchester working-class life so impressive was the fairness of the evidence she advanced. She might be pleading for better living and working conditions for an inarticulate population, but she never pretended they were angels" (Gerin, 78). She repeatedly affirmed, after the publication of Mary Barton, that her portrait of the relations between employers and their workers was written from a humanitarian point of view, and not a political one.

In 1850 Charles Dickens asked her to write for his new periodical, Household Words, and she published extensively there and in other Victorian magazines for the rest of her life. In 1850 too 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 (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.