Elizabeth Gaskell
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Elizabeth Gaskell (29 September, 1810, London – 12 November, 1865, Holybourne, Hampshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was a British novelist.
Life
She was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in London in 1810. Her mother, Eliza, the niece of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, died when she was a child. Her father, William Stevenson, was a Unitarian minister, and also a writer.
Much of her childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with an aunt in Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as Cranford.
She also spent some time in Newcastle upon Tyne and Edinburgh. Her stepmother was a sister of the Scottish miniature artist, William John Thomson, who painted a famous portrait of Elizabeth in 1832.
In the same year, she married William Gaskell, a minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel who had a literary career of his own. They settled in Manchester where the industrial surroundings would offer inspiration for her novels (in the industrial novel genre).
The circles in which they moved included religious dissenters and social reformers, including William and Mary Howitt.
Mrs. Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. The best-known of her remaining novels are Cranford (1853), North and South (1854), and Wives and Daughters (1865). She was a friend of Charles Dickens, and wrote the first biography of Charlotte Brontë, which played a significant role in developing her fellow writer's reputation.
She died in Hampshire, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, aged 55.
Mrs. Gaskell today ranks as one of the most highly-regarded British novelists of the Victorian era.
Style
With the help of Charles Dickens, Gaskell became popular for her writing, especially her Ghost story writing.Even though her writing conforms to Victorian Conventions (including signing her name "Mrs. Gaskell"), Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of Victorian era attitudes, particularly those toward women, with complex narratives and dynamic women characters.Excluding Reference to Gaskell's Ghost Stories, Abrams, M.H., et. al. (Eds.) "Elizabeth Gaskell, 1810-1865." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors: The Romantic Period through the Twentieth Century, 7th ed., Vol. B. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. ISBN 0-393-97304-2. DDC 820.8--dc21. LC PR1109.N6.
Publications
Novels
- Mary Barton (1848)
- Ruth (1853)
- North and South (1854)
- The Grey Woman (1861)
- Sylvia's Lovers (1863)
- Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)
- Cranford (1851)
- Half a Life-Time Ago
- Cousin Phillis (1863)
Collections
- The Moorland Cottage (1850)
- The Old Nurse's Story (1852)
- Lizzie Leigh (1855)
- My Lady Ludlow (1859)
- Round the Sofa (1859)
- Lois the Witch (1861)
- A Dark Night's Work (1863)
Short stories
- The Half Brothers
- The Squire's Story(1853)
Non-fiction
- The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)
External links
- [The Gaskell Web]
- [Elizabeth Gaskell at Victorian Web]
- [Website of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth]
- [Elizabeth Gaskell A brief biography]
References
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