Elizabeth Gaskell

29 September 1810 - 12 November 1865

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.

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Connections

Connections Sort ascending	Author name	Excerpt
Literary responses	Florence Nightingale	Edward Cook and William John Bishop agree that although Notes is FN 's least read work, it is her most remarkable. Cook, Edward. The Life of Florence Nightingale. Macmillan. 343 Bishop, William John, and Sue Goldie. A Bio-Bibliography of Florence Nightingale. Dawsons for the International Council of Nurses. 52 On 31 December 1858Elizabeth Gaskell said of the second volume:...
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...
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...
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...
Literary responses	Anna Letitia Barbauld	Literary admirers of the hymns included Hannah More , Anna Seward , and Elizabeth Carter , who found some passages amazingly sublime. McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 193 The innumerable children who loved and later remembered them included Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
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	Anna Brownell Jameson	A Commonplace Book was reviewed by the Literary Gazette, the Athenæum (by Henry Fothergill Chorley ), The Spectator and Gentleman's Magazine. Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press. 47 Elizabeth Gaskell pronounced herself in a letter to ABJ delighted with its graceful suggestive wisdom. Jameson, Anna Brownell. Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships (1812-1860). Editor Erskine, Beatrice Caroline, T. Fisher Unwin. 295
Literary responses	Charlotte O'Conor Eccles	Once again reviewers (as quoted at the back of The Matrimonial Lottery) were delighted with these [c]lever studies of Irish life and character. The Athenæum praised especially those stories which reflected first-hand knowledge (with...
Literary responses	Isabella Neil Harwood	This novel generated a large amount of attention and positive reviews. They all made some points in common: they loved the plot, the way Minnie/Minna's character developed, the originality and the sustained interest it provided...
Literary responses	Henrietta Camilla Jenkin	Elizabeth Gaskell later reported that reviews had been good. Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press. 527 The Athenæum notice, by Geraldine Jewsbury , was moderately favourable, but by calling it the work of a beginner, Athenæum. J. Lection. 1593 (1858): 593 The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html. 654 (1840): 371-2
Literary responses	George Eliot	On the whole reviewers were enthusiastic (E. S. Dallas began his notice in the Times, George Eliot is as great as ever Carroll, David, editor. George Eliot: The Critical Heritage. Barnes and Noble. 131 ), but the ending of The Mill on the Floss...
Literary responses	Dinah Mulock Craik	Some felt she wrote too much too fast. Elizabeth Gaskell commented in a letter of 1851, I wish she had some other means of support than writing, which must be pumped up instead of bubbling...
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...
Literary responses	Emily Brontë	Since the early criticism which took its lead from Charlotte's biographical portrait, a biographical and hagiographic industry has arisen around all three Brontë sisters and their home in Haworth. A. Mary F. Robinson published...

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