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.
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Julia Wedgwood
JW was born into that section of the English professional class which functioned as an intellectual and cultural elite. She was connected through her family with other Victorians strongly committed to spiritual and moral inquiry...
Cultural formation Hesba Stretton
As an adult HS abandoned her mother 's strict Methodism and became an incurable sermon-taster. She favoured several denominations at the extreme of Protestantism. During the twelve-year period recorded in her Log Books only three...
Cultural formation James Anthony Froude
He gradually lost faith in High Church tenets, however, a process that intensified under the influence of Thomas Carlyle . JAF was forced to relinquish his fellowship on publishing The Nemesis of Faith (1849), and...
death Charlotte Brontë
Her body was placed in the family vault in Haworth Church on April 4. When Gaskell heard of the circumstances of the death, she regretted she had not known; she would have hoped to save...
Education Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR and her sister were educated by a series of governesses in London. It was not until the arrival of Miss Truelock in 1850 that their father was finally satisfied with a governess's ability...
Education Amy Levy
At some time during her girlhood AL listed her favourite poets as all men, while her favourite prose writers included Charlotte Brontë , Elizabeth Gaskell , George Eliot , and Anne Thackeray Ritchie .
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
16
Education Jessie Boucherett
JB was educated at the Misses Byerleys' ladies' school, Avonbank, Stratford upon Avon. Elizabeth Gaskell had attended the same school.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908.
“Obituary: Miss Emilia Jessie Boucherett”. Times, p. 8.
Education Sarah Orne Jewett
She read extensively as a child, and came early to authors as diverse as Jane Austen , George Eliot , Margaret Oliphant , Henry Fielding , Laurence Sterne , Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriet Beecher Stowe
Education Jessie Fothergill
She acquired much knowledge through her voracious consumption of books: I loved books, and read all that I could get hold of, and have had many a rebuke for poring over those books instead of...
Education May Sinclair
Little is known about the early education of MS or her brothers. She was taught the piano, and educated herself from her father's well-stocked library of Elizabethan, Restoration, and Victorian literature. Among her reading a...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Stone
Elizabeth Gaskell wrote that ES 's husband was a clergyman. Critic Michael Wheeler speculates that he was the Rev. Thomas Stone , whom ES would have met while he was the Curate of Deane...
Family and Intimate relationships Q. D. Leavis
The Roths were devastated by their daughter's decision to marry a gentile. They disowned her and ceased to give her any financial support. However, this period had its happy moments as well. Q. D. introduced...
Family and Intimate relationships Amabel Williams-Ellis
AWE 's mother, Henrietta Mary Amy (Simpson) Strachey , known as Amy, was born in 1866 and married John St Loe Strachey in 1887. She contributed about twenty pieces to The Spectator between 1900 and...
Family and Intimate relationships Emily Brontë
His eventual position as a clergyman and published author in early nineteenth-century England was, given his background, a considerable accomplishment. Notwithstanding Elizabeth Gaskell 's portrait of him in her biography of his daughter as an...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne 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...

Timeline

14 September 1767
Midwife Elizabeth Brownrigg was hanged at Tyburn (in London near the present Marble Arch) for the murder of Mary Clifford , a workhouse apprentice.
1825
Frances Parkes (Mrs. William Parkes 1786-1842), published a highly successful domesticconduct book whose lengthy title begins Domestic Duties; or, Instructions to Young Married Ladies.
1837
Fredrika Bremer published her domestic novelGrannarne, translated into English in 1842 as Neighbours.
December 1839
Thomas Carlyle published his essayChartism, bearing the date of 1840.
Late Summer 1842
The Plug Riots, with significant participation by women, occurred in the northern industrial region of England when workers rebelled against inadequate wages.
March 1848
Chartist uprisings took place in London, Glasgow, and Manchester.
14 March 1856
A petitionfor Reform of the Married Women's Property Law, organized by the Married Women's Property Committee and signed by many prominent women, was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
By 20 June 1857
W. W. Carus Wilson published A Refutation of the Statements in The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Regarding the Caterton Clergy Daughters' School when at Cowan Bridge.
10 April 1858
An advertisement for Mudie's Circulating Library boasted of its vast holdings of popular titles.
January 1859
W. R. Greg 's essay"False Morality of Lady Novelists" was published in the National Review in London.
March-June 1864
William Makepeace Thackeray 's final, unfinished novel, Denis Duval, appeared in Cornhill Magazine.
May 1992
The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association held its first annual conference. Thereafter the conference was held at a different American location each year.
Parker, Pamela Corpron. “A Conference of Our Own: on the 20th Anniversary of the BWWA”. The Female Spectator, Vol.
16
, No. 1, p. 6.
6

Texts

Gaskell, Elizabeth. A Dark Night’s Work. Smith, Elder, 1863.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cousin Phillis and Other Tales. Smith, Elder, 1865.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford. Chapman and Hall, 1853.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford; Cousin Phillis. Editor Keating, Peter John, Penguin, 1986.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “Editorial Materials”. Mary Barton, edited by Jennifer Foster, Broadview, 2000, p. Various pages.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Anna Walters. Elizabeth Gaskell - Four Short Stories. Pandora Press, 1983.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Further Letters of Mrs. Gaskell. Editors Chapple, John and Alan Shelston, Manchester University Press, 2000.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Gothic Tales. Editor Kranzler, Laura, Penguin, 2000.
Shelston, Alan, and Elizabeth Gaskell. “Introduction”. The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Penguin, 1975, pp. 9-37.
Walters, Anna, and Elizabeth Gaskell. “Introduction”. Elizabeth Gaskell - Four Short Stories, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 1-22.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. Cranford; Cousin Phillis, edited by Peter John Keating, Penguin, 1986, pp. 7-30.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras”. Howitt’s Journal of Literature and Popular Progress, Vol.
1
, pp. 310 - 13, 334.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales. Chapman and Hall, 1855.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. Chapman and Hall, 1848.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. Editor Foster, Jennifer, Broadview, 2000.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Anita Miller. My Lady Ludlow. Academy Chicago, 1995.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales. Sampson and Low, 1861.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Chapman and Hall, 1855.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Editor Easson, Angus, Oxford University Press, 1973.
Miller, Anita, and Elizabeth Gaskell. “Preface and Chronology”. My Lady Ludlow, Academy Chicago, 1995, pp. 7-10.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Sophia Isaac Holland. Private Voices. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Anita Wilson, Keele University Press, 1996.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Ruth. Chapman and Hall, 1853.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Ruth. Editor Shelston, Alan, Oxford University Press, 1985.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Sylvia’s Lovers. Smith, Elder, 1863.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Arthur Pollard. Sylvia’s Lovers. Dent, 1964.