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.
She undertook some teaching of the girls while she was there, but was not satisfied with her performance, which was hampered by shyness. On her one successful evening she dressed up as Debòrah Jenkyns in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edna Lyall
A Hardy Norseman makes honorific reference to Elizabeth Gaskell
's Wives and Daughters. Though it is largely set in Norway (convincingly portrayed), a crucial meeting takes place at Hyde Park Corner in London...
Textual Production
Edna Lyall
The contributors to Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, 1897, included EL
, who wrote for it a piece on Elizabeth Gaskell
.
Payne, George A. "Edna Lyall:" an Appreciation. John Heywood.
17
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.
MBL
made her views known to the public through the columns of the Times on a variety of political and literary issues: women's suffrage, food rationing during the first world war (on which she offered...
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...
Publishing
Mary Linskill
One of the pieces in this volume, Cornborough Vicarage was said in the Feminist Companion to have been serialized in Good Words, but Stamp thinks it unlikely that any of the volume's contents had...
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
16
Performance of text
Rosamond Lehmann
A new departure for RL
was a lecture on Elizabeth Gaskell
, which she gave at Leicester University
in autumn 1953.
Hastings, Selina. Rosamond Lehmann. Chatto and Windus.
318
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...
Textual Features
Marghanita Laski
The book aims at literary recuperation. Here ML
blends analysis with celebration, but she recalls her marginalised writers primarily to raise questions about the present state of writing for children. She says that her subjects...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Margaret Kennedy
Here Kennedy argues that entertainment and enjoyment are valuable aims for the novel. She maintains that the novelist is, in essence, a storyteller, but the storyteller-novelist has been excluded by a literary society that devalues...
Textual Production
Annie Keary
AK
's next novel, Oldbury, was compared by some critics to Gaskell
's Cranford, because it is a study of a small provincial community, a backwater out of the mainstream.
