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
Friends, Associates John Ruskin
JR 's social and intellectual network was extensive: amongst his acquaintances were Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning , Elizabeth Gaskell , Violet Hunt , Jean Ingelow , Flora Shaw , Jane Welsh Carlyle and Thomas Carlyle
Literary responses J. K. Rowling
Of course nobody could review this book without implicit or explicit reference to the Harry Potter books. What, some wondered, would devoted child readers make of the sex and swearing? The novel violently divided commentators...
Literary responses Christina Rossetti
Gabriel anticipated critics when he described Commonplace as a prose tale . . . rather in the Austen vein.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Editors Doughty, Oswald and John Robert Wahl, Clarendon Press.
2: 818
Contrasting Commonplace, and Other Short Stories with tawdry romance,
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2223 (1870): 734
the...
Textual Production Elizabeth Robins
ER 's novel White Violets, or, Great Powers, which she wrote in 1909 (just after the first unexpurgated appearance of Elizabeth Gaskell 's life of Charlotte Brontë ), remained unpublished, for reasons that are...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michèle Roberts
This volume brings together pieces from various occasions and venues. In them MR discusses many of her favourite topics—the food, sex and god named in her title, the second and third often involving the relation...
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...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
She followed it up in in her address of 10 January 1913 as President of the English Association , published in pamphlet form as A Discourse on Modern Sibyls, as well as in From...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR wrote a memorial preface to Poems and Music by Anne Evans in 1880. In 1892 she drew on her father 's ideas for a largely anecdotal introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell 's Cranford.
Callow, Steven D. “A Biographical Sketch of Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
2
, pp. 285-7.
293
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The Blackstick Papers treat a wide range of topics; three of the thirteen concern women writers, and the book's frontispiece is from a miniature of Felicia Hemans . ATR notes the stoicism
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Blackstick Papers. Books for Libraries Press.
146
of Mary Berry
Literary responses Elizabeth Rigby
Brontë also indulged in assumptions about gender and class in her reading of the critique. She wrote: I read The Quarterly without a pang, except that I thought there were some sentences disgraceful to the...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
BP 's father wrote to her on 3 May 1950 commending this novel, which he had not expected to enjoy since he preferred mysteries.
Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. Barbara Pym: A Critical Biography. University of Missouri Press.
157n12
Robert Liddell , who had been familiar with it throughout...
Textual Features Adelaide Procter
Milly's Expiation is interestingly reminiscent of Elizabeth Gaskell 's North and South, 1855 (to which the Athenæum compared it), and anticipatory of George Eliot 's Felix Holt, 1866. Milly is an idealised elder...
Literary responses Adelaide Procter
Athenæum reviewer H. F. Chorley , sandwiching his discussion of A Chaplet of Verses between those of two other works by earnest women, expressed some annoyance at its assured and zealous sectarianism and regretted...
Friends, Associates Beatrix Potter
Friends constituted another bright spot in her life. One early mentor was the Rev. William Gaskell , whose death in June 1884 was the occasion of moralising in her journal about loss and change.
Grinstein, Alexander. The Remarkable Beatrix Potter. International Universities Press.
28
Friends, Associates Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP knew personally and corresponded with many of the Victorian intelligentsia. In addition to her Langham Place associates already mentioned, her literary friends and acquaintances included Matilda Hays , Harriet Martineau , Anthony Trollope ,...

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