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.
When Elizabeth Gaskell
wrote to MT
in 1855 seeking information for her Life of Charlotte Brontë, Taylor responded with two letters from which Gaskell quoted.
Taylor, Mary. Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Brontë: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere. Editor Stevens, Joan, Auckland University Press; Oxford University Press.
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...
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...
Material Conditions of Writing
Harriet Beecher Stowe
HBS
used her earlier travels in Europe as material for a travel guide for Americans. She had met Germaine de Staël
and Elizabeth Gaskell
while in Europe, and had voraciously read everything by George Sand
Author summary
Elizabeth Stone
Elizabeth Stone
published several novels during the 1840s and 50s, including early Condition of England novels. She continued to publish in her other chosen genres (social history and religious books) for another two decades. Despite...
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...
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.
63
, No. 1, The Library, pp. 11-30.
17-18
In the...
Occupation
Lucy Toulmin Smith
Manchester College (now Harris Manchester College
) had a long and distinguished history as a Dissenting institution (including spells at York and London) before it moved to Oxford in 1889 and into new buildings...
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...
Textual Production
May Sinclair
Her introductions to Jane Eyre and Shirley followed in February 1908, that to Elizabeth Gaskell
's The Life of Charlotte Brontë in June 1908, and those for Villette, The Professor, and The Tenant...
Friends, Associates
Flora Shaw
Here she became a friend of novelist and neighbour George Meredith
, who introduced her to a wider social circle, including W.T. Stead
, the scandalous journalist and editor of the Pall Mall Gazette...
Textual Features
Dorothy L. Sayers
Here she mounts a powerful appreciation of the novel, both for its importance in the development of the detective story (all the clues, she says, are clearly conveyed to the reader, something which seldom happened...
Literary responses
Margaret Sandbach
Writing for the Athenæum, Elizabeth Gaskell
was convinced the author was a woman because the person who would call a horse a pleasure-giving thing, and talk so fluently of imaginings and questionings...
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...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
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.
