Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) was a Victorian novelist who wrote both about the industrial poverty of Manchester, in Mary Barton and North and South, and about the gentle world of the small country town, in Cranford and Wives and Daughters. Her Life of Charlotte Brontë, written at the request of Brontë's father, was the first biography of her friend.
Works
Cranford, North and South
Knutsford
Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born in London in 1810. Her mother died when she was thirteen months old, and she was sent to live with an aunt in Knutsford, a small town in Cheshire, which she would later portray as Cranford and as Hollingford in Wives and Daughters.
In 1832 she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister in Manchester, then the world's leading industrial city. They had six children, four daughters of whom survived. Elizabeth took part in her husband's work among the poor, teaching and visiting families in the working districts.
Mary Barton and Cranford
After the death of their baby son William in 1845, her husband encouraged her to write to ease her grief. Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life, published anonymously in 1848, portrayed the misery of mill workers during the hungry 1840s and caused a stir; mill owners accused it of being unfair to them.
Charles Dickens invited her to write for his new magazine, Household Words, where Cranford appeared in instalments from 1851, and later North and South, about the daughter of a clergyman who moves to an industrial town and clashes with a mill owner, John Thornton.
Charlotte Brontë and the last years
Gaskell met Charlotte Brontë in 1850 and they became friends. After Brontë's death, her father asked Gaskell to write her life. The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) was admired, but some passages, about the school at Cowan Bridge and about the family of Branwell's employer, led to threats of legal action.
Her later works include Sylvia's Lovers and Wives and Daughters, which many consider her finest novel. With the money from her writing she bought a house in Hampshire as a surprise for her husband, and died suddenly there in 1865, before she could finish the last chapter of Wives and Daughters.
Anecdotes
An unfinished novel
Wives and Daughters was appearing in instalments in the Cornhill Magazine when Gaskell died in November 1865. The editor added a short note explaining how she had intended the story to end, with the marriage of the heroine, Molly Gibson, to Roger Hamley.
Mrs Gaskell
For more than a century she was known to readers and critics simply as Mrs Gaskell, as her books were signed. Since the late twentieth century she has more often been called Elizabeth Gaskell.
Frequently asked questions
What are Elizabeth Gaskell's major novels?
Mary Barton (1848), Cranford (1853), Ruth (1853), North and South (1855), Sylvia's Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1866).
What town is Cranford based on?
Knutsford, in Cheshire, where Gaskell spent her childhood with her aunt.
Did Gaskell know Charlotte Brontë?
Yes. They met in 1850 and became friends, and Gaskell wrote The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857.