Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Gaskell
-
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.
The novel established FMM
's reputation for precise use of prose,
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
60741 (4 October 1980): 8
received good reviews, and very nearly won the Polignac Prize.
Williams, Merryn. Six Women Novelists, Macmillan.
45
FMM
was judged sensitive yet detached, firm and...
Reception
Marie Belloc Lowndes
Again Harold Hannyngton Child
approved this work, calling it the story of a great passion told with delicacy and power, a combination which is none too common.
Child, Harold H. “Barbara Rebell”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 197, p. 350.
Along with The Wrongs of Woman, Helen Fleetwood is the best known title in CET
's extensive oeuvre. It is often included in critical discussions of Victorian industrial fiction, along with Gaskell
's Mary...
Reception
Geraldine Jewsbury
Many readers, including George Henry Lewes
, were suspicious of this novel's sympathetic portrait of manufacturers, and speculated that Marian Withers was Jewsbury's response to Elizabeth Gaskell
's Mary Barton, which had presented factory...
Reception
Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT
, whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...
Reception
Mary Howitt
MH
's biographer Joy Dunicliff
credits her with introducing the reading public to both Keats
and Gaskell
.
Dunicliff, Joy. Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer. Excalibur Press of London.
1
Reception
Anne Marsh
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes AM
's very high contemporary reputation. It cites the London Weekly Chronicle and Margaret Oliphant
each hailing her, in her heyday, as a leader among women novelists (though...
Residence
Anne Brontë
Despite the depiction of the village as an isolated, primitive place full of uneducated, violent inhabitants (by Elizabeth Gaskell
in her Life of Charlotte Brontë), it was a busy mill town of about 4,500...
Residence
Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ
and her brother Frank
first set up house at 4 Lloyd Street in Manchester. They then, in 1843, moved to 30 Carlton Terrace, Greenheys Lane in a village called Greenheys, near Manchester...
Residence
Selina Davenport
Both during and after her marriage SD
lived at Knutsford in Cheshire (which was not only her husband's home but also the original of the town in Gaskell
's Cranford, published in volume form...
Residence
Alison Uttley
AU
and her husband first settled in the seventeenth-century Old Vicarage at Knutsford in Cheshire. Knutsford was, of course, the setting of Elizabeth Gaskell
's Cranford, and to AU
's delight, the Old...
Residence
Charlotte Brontë
In early April 1820, the Brontës moved to Haworth, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where their father took up the position of perpetual curate. Despite the depiction of the village as an isolated...
Textual Features
Ann Gomersall
After Fanny drops Charles for somebody of her own class, his father's death brings him the revelation that he is illegitimate: he must be reduced to the necessity of living by his industry!
Gomersall, Ann. The Citizen. Scatcherd and Whitaker.
1: 126
Textual Features
Patricia Beer
PB
here considers a series of canonical authors, Austen
, Eliot
, Charlotte Brontë
, and Elizabeth Gaskell
, and the way that the Woman Question was handled in fiction. Critic John Mullan
notes her...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Stone
Critic Monica Correa Fryckstedt
considers ESthe first Manchester resident to write a novel about the manufacturing districts . . . . she conveys a vivid picture of the rising Lancashire cottonocracy.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “The Early Industrial Novel: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Mary Barton</span> and Its Predecessors”. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol.
