Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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...
Friends, Associates
Mary Taylor
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
