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.
After Fanny drops Charles for somebody of her own class, his father's death brings him the revelation that he is illegitimate: he must be reduced to the necessity of living by his industry!
qtd. in
Gomersall, Ann. The Citizen. Scatcherd and Whitaker, 1790, 2 vols.
1: 126
Textual Features
Jessie Fothergill
Of particular interest is JF
's handling of the benefits of cross-class mutual aid and moral principle
Debenham, Helen. “’Almost always two sides to a question’: the novels of Jessie Fothergill”. Popular Victorian Women Writers, edited by Kay Boardman and Shirley Jones, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 66-89.
76
as rich and poor, male and female, employer and workers, civil authorities and landowners join forces against...
Textual Features
Patricia Beer
PB
here considers a series of canonical authors, Austen
, Eliot
, Charlotte Brontë
, and Elizabeth Gaskell
, and the way that the Woman Question was handled in fiction. Critic John Mullan
notes her...
Textual Features
Isak Dinesen
Stambaugh remarks that all the stories here are studies, specifically, of women's destinies.
Stambaugh, Sara. The Witch and the Goddess in the Stories of Isak Dinesen. UMI Research Press, 1988.
28
The final, short one, The Ring, concerns a young woman, Lovisa, whose idyllic, clandestine courtship has recently ended in marriage...
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...
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 anecdotalintroduction to Elizabeth Gaskell
's Cranford.
Callow, Steven D. “A Biographical Sketch of Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
2
, 1980, pp. 285-7.
293
In...
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
Textual Production
Georgiana Craik
GC
also published shorter fiction in a number of journals. This included Alwyn's First Wife for Fraser's Magazine in 1855, A Sketch of Two Homes and the sensational tale My Sister's Husband in 1857 for...
Textual Production
Mary Howitt
Notable among MH
's large fictional output are didactic stories like Johnny Derbyshire, a Country Quaker (written jointly with her husband). She and Elizabeth Gaskell
swapped ghost stories by letter, but MH
would not encourage...
Textual Production
Anna Jane Vardill
Tabby-Hall, as a community of unattached women, was invented by members of the Attic Chest circle run by Eleanor Anne Porden
.
Snell, Susan. “Enlightenment Females and Freemasonry”. Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, Vol.
4
, No. 1-2, 2013.
n42
It fits somewhere between Sarah Scott
's idealised Millenium Hall and Elizabeth Gaskell
The title of the series (used in the Bodleian
though not in the British Library
catalogue) was Tales for the People and their Children. Following the British Libary dating (since authorities differ) MC's own...
Textual Production
May Sinclair
Her introductions to Jane Eyre and Shirley followed in February 1908, that to Elizabeth Gaskell
's The Life of Charlotte Brontë in June 1908, and those for Villette, The Professor, and The Tenant...
