Elizabeth Gaskell

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Standard Name: Gaskell, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
Nickname: Lily
Married Name: Elizabeth Gaskell
Indexed Name: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Pseudonym: Cotton Mather Mills
Pseudonym: The Author of Mary Barton etc.
Self-constructed Name: E. C. Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell , one of the foremost fiction-writers of the mid-Victorian period, produced a corpus of seven novels, numerous short stories, and a controversial biography of Charlotte Brontë . She wrote extensively for periodicals, as well as producing novels directly for the book market, often on issues of burning interest: her industrial novels appeared in the midst of fierce debate over class relations, factory conditions and legislation; Ruth took a fallen woman and mother as its protagonist just as middle-class feminist critique of gender roles emerged. Gaskell occupies a bridging position between Harriet Martineau and George Eliot in the development of the domestic novel.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships John Ruskin
The next year she married her husband's protégé the painter John Everett Millais . Rumours of an affair between Effie and Millais, and gossip surrounding the annulment, produced speculation and scandal. Elizabeth Gaskell sided with...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Marsh
Anne's brother-in-law from 1822 was the distinguished Sir Henry Holland (physician to Princess Caroline, and later Prince Albert and Queen Victoria ), a descendent of the Wedgwood family and cousin of Elizabeth Gaskell ...
Family and Intimate relationships Charlotte Brontë
Patrick Brontë was an Irish protestant from a large respectable farming family of limited means. He took to books from an early age, opened a school for the gentry at the age of sixteen, became...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Augusta Ward
From the time of her arrival in England, a major influence on the young Mary Arnold (later MAW ) was her aunt and godmother Jane Arnold or Aunt K., a cultivated woman and friend...
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
In 1838, HM met the British diplomat David Urquhart , who was known for his championship of Turkey against Russia. Although she recorded her dislike for his social egotism and misogynistic opinions, his hatred and...
Friends, Associates Charlotte Brontë
She and Gaskell quickly established an epistolary friendship.
Shelston, Alan, and Elizabeth Gaskell. “Introduction”. The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Penguin, pp. 9-37.
11
Friends, Associates George Eliot
Some of her closest friends were prominent feminists, and they were among those soonest willing to flout convention and visit her after her union to Lewes.
Despite the social and spiritual gulf between them, GE
Friends, Associates Ann Hawkshaw
Sir John Hawkshaw was known to Elizabeth Gaskell 's circle. Samuel Bamford , the working-class Manchester radical and poet, mentions AH and praises her poetry in the preface to his Poems (self-published at Manchester in...
Friends, Associates Charlotte Brontë
Numerous friends and acquaintances of CB wrote tributes or obituaries which initiated the legend of the Brontës and Charlotte in particular: Harriet Martineau in the Daily News on April 6; Matthew Arnold in a short...
Friends, Associates Henrietta Camilla Jenkin
In Manchester HCJ became by 1854 a friend of Elizabeth Gaskell , who helped her with publishing business.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press.
286
Stevenson, Robert Louis, and Fleeming Jenkin. “Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin”. Papers, Literary, Scientific, &c., edited by Sir Sidney Colvin et al., Longmans, Green, p. 1: xi - clxx.
li
To the future writer Vernon Lee she acted as literary mentor. In July 1871 she...
Friends, Associates Harriet Beecher Stowe
While visiting Paris, HBS frequented the salon of Germaine de Staël , and in Rome she met Elizabeth Gaskell . In a letter to Grace Schwabe , Gaskell remarked that Stowe was short and...
Friends, Associates Sara Coleridge
Among women writers, in addition to Dorothy Wordsworth , Joanna Baillie , and Maria Jane Jewsbury , SC also knew Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Anna Jameson , Elizabeth Rigby , Elizabeth Gaskell , and Harriet Martineau
Friends, Associates Dinah Mulock Craik
Their circle of friends included the critic and historian George Lillie Craik , Camilla Toulmin , John Westland Marston , Alexander Macmillan (the publisher), Charles Edward Mudie (founder of Mudie's Lending Library ), and the...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
Eliza Lynn met a number of women authors who were once applauded but later complacently forgotten . . . . as literary fossils.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
85
She contended that Women who wrote were then few and far...
Friends, Associates Eliza Meteyard
She became connected through her writing to Douglas Jerrold , Mary and William Howitt , and Harriet Martineau .
Lightbown, Ronald W., and Eliza Meteyard. “Introduction”. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Cornmarket Press.
The difficulties of social life for unattached women are visible in her regret and anxiety over...

Timeline

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Texts

Gaskell, Elizabeth. “The Doom of the Griffiths”. Harper’s Magazine, Vol.
16
, pp. 220-34.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press, 1967.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Smith, Elder, 1857.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Shelston, Alan, Penguin, 1975.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Birket Foster. The Moorland Cottage. Chapman and Hall, 1850.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “The Old Nurse’s Story”. Household Words, Vol.
extra christmas number
, pp. 11-20.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell. Editors Shattock, Joanne et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2005.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and George Du Maurier. Wives and Daughters. Smith, Elder, 1866.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Margaret Lane. Wives and Daughters. Dent, 1966.