Elizabeth Gaskell

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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.
  • BirthName: Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
  • Nickname: Lily
  • Self-constructed: E. C. Gaskell
    EG published first anonymously and then allusively, with reference to the titles of her previous books. She published the The Life of Charlotte Brontë and Lois the Witch and Other Tales as E. C. Gaskell, but not until Sylvia's Lovers (1863), close to the end of her career, did she publish with the name by which she was known throughout the twentieth century: Mrs Gaskell.
    Sadleir, Michael. Excursions in Victorian Bibliography. Chaundy and Cox, 1922.
    203-9
  • Married: Gaskell
  • Pseudonyms: Cotton Mather Mills; The Author of Mary Barton etc.
  • Indexed: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Photograph of a well-known head-and shoulders drawing of Elizabeth Gaskell by George Richmond, 1851. She looks calmly at the viewer, her smooth hair parted in the middle, with a ribbon or scarf hanging from her head and a bow at her neckline. She thought the drawing on the whole a good likeness. National Portrait Gallery.

Milestones

29 September 1810

EG was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson at 93 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, her parents' eighth and youngest child.
Accord to biographer Jenny Uglow , at the time of Elizabeth Gaskell's birth, this address was known as Lindsey Row.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
4

18 October 1848

EG published her innovative story of industrial strife, Mary Barton, anonymously in two volumes. It was positively reviewed but also accused of being too sympathetic towards the the workers.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
188, 617

21 October 1848

The first review of EG 's novel Mary Barton was published in the Athenæum; it was positive, as were later reviews in the Examiner and the Literary Gazette.
qtd. in
Easson, Angus, editor. Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1991.
62

8 November 1848

Thomas Carlyle (whose words EG had used as an epigraph to Mary Barton) wrote an enthusiastic letter to her, praising her novel, which he said both he and his wife Jane had read with pleasure.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
217, 642n5

13 December 1851

The first story of what became EG 's Cranford, linked tales of a female community which draw on her youth in Knutsford, appeared in Household Words.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
282

June 1853

The linked stories of Cranford appeared in volume form, now divided into sixteen chapters. Following her death it became EG 's best-known and most beloved work.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
618

8 May 1855

EG entered into the first known English agreement for royalty payment on a new edition of Cranford and a collection of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales put out by Chapman and Hall .
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press, 1967.
406-7, 967
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. Victorian Novelists and Publishers. University of Chicago Press, 1976.
97-8

August 1864-January 1866

EG 's last novel, Wives and Daughters, appeared serially and anonymously in Cornhill Magazine; it was truncated near its conclusion by her death.
Her anonymity was by choice, not convention. Her unsigned novel parts appeared alongside some signed pieces by others. One by Matthew Arnold immediately followed the novel's first instalment.
Hughes, Linda K., and Michael Lund. Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell’s Work. University Press of Virginia, 1999.
22
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
619

12 November 1865

EG died suddenly of a stroke at her new home in Holybourne, near Alton.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
608-10

Biography

Birth

29 September 1810

EG was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson at 93 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, her parents' eighth and youngest child.
Accord to biographer Jenny Uglow , at the time of Elizabeth Gaskell's birth, this address was known as Lindsey Row.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
4

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