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.
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...
Sir John Hawkshaw was known to Elizabeth Gaskell
's circle. Samuel Bamford
, the working-class Manchester radical and poet, mentions AH
and praises her poetry in the preface to his Poems (self-published at Manchester in...
Eliza Lynn met a number of women authors who were once applauded but later complacently forgotten . . . . as literary fossils.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
85
She contended that Women who wrote were then few and far...
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.
Elizabeth Gaskell
was also a visitor, friend, and neighbour. Returning one of her visits, GJ
was reportedly found sitting on the floor of Gaskell's drawing-room, reading aloud from Charles Lamb
's The Essays of Elia.
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin.
23
Friends, Associates
Eliza Fletcher
Hamilton, herself a conservative, set about de-demonizing EF
's political reputation. She had good success in persuading her friends that Mrs Fletcher was not the ferocious Democrat she had been represented, and that she neither...
Friends, Associates
Florence Nightingale
In this year, 1854, Elizabeth Gaskell
visited the Nightingales' Derbyshire home, Lea Hurst, and stayed on there to write when the family left for Embley Park.
Cook, Edward. The Life of Florence Nightingale. Macmillan.
