Elizabeth Gaskell

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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.
Photograph of a well-known head-and shoulders drawing of Elizabeth Gaskell by George Richmond, 1851. She looks calmly at the viewer, her smooth hair parted in the middle, with a ribbon or scarf hanging from her head and a bow at her neckline. She thought the drawing on the whole a good likeness. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships John Ruskin
The next year she married her husband's protégé the painter John Everett Millais . Rumours of an affair between Effie and Millais, and gossip surrounding the annulment, produced speculation and scandal. Elizabeth Gaskell sided with...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Charlotte Brontë
Patrick Brontë was an Irish protestant from a large respectable farming family of limited means. He took to books from an early age, opened a school for the gentry at the age of sixteen, became...
Family and Intimate relationships Amabel Williams-Ellis
AWE 's mother, Henrietta Mary Amy (Simpson) Strachey , known as Amy, was born in 1866 and married John St Loe Strachey in 1887. She contributed about twenty pieces to The Spectator between 1900 and...
Friends, Associates Harriet Beecher Stowe
While visiting Paris, HBS frequented the salon of Germaine de Staël , and in Rome she met Elizabeth Gaskell . In a letter to Grace Schwabe , Gaskell remarked that Stowe was short and...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
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, 1899.
85
She contended that Women who wrote were then few and far...
Friends, Associates George Eliot
Some of her closest friends were prominent feminists, and they were among those soonest willing to flout convention and visit her after her union to Lewes.
Despite the social and spiritual gulf between them, GE
Friends, Associates Charlotte Brontë
Numerous friends and acquaintances of CB wrote tributes or obituaries which initiated the legend of the Brontës and Charlotte in particular: Harriet Martineau in the Daily News on April 6; Matthew Arnold in a short...
Friends, Associates Jane Loudon
As well as horticultural and artistic friends and associates, JL and her husband had literary friends, who included Robert Chambers and his wife Anne , Elizabeth Gaskell , Mary Howitt , Julia Kavanagh , Charles Dickens
Friends, Associates Sara Coleridge
Among women writers, in addition to Dorothy Wordsworth , Joanna Baillie , and Maria Jane Jewsbury , SC also knew Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Anna Jameson , Elizabeth Rigby , Elizabeth Gaskell , and Harriet Martineau
Friends, Associates Eliza Meteyard
She became connected through her writing to Douglas Jerrold , Mary and William Howitt , and Harriet Martineau .
Lightbown, Ronald W., and Eliza Meteyard. “Introduction”. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Cornmarket Press, 1970.
The difficulties of social life for unattached women are visible in her regret and anxiety over...
Friends, Associates Julia Wedgwood
Sixteen-year-old JW visited the holidaying Gaskell family at Skelwith in Little Langdale, near Ambleside in the Lake District.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
231-2
Friends, Associates Fredrika Bremer
FB's lifelong friendship with Per Böklin survived her refusal of his hand and his marriage to someone else. The influence he had on her thinking was shared by Stina, Countess Sommerhielm , and the academic...
Friends, Associates Dinah Mulock Craik
Their circle of friends included the critic and historian George Lillie Craik , Camilla Toulmin , John Westland Marston , Alexander Macmillan (the publisher), Charles Edward Mudie (founder of Mudie's Lending Library ), and the...
Friends, Associates Florence Nightingale
In this year, 1854, Elizabeth Gaskell visited the Nightingales' Derbyshire home, Lea Hurst, and stayed on there to write when the family left for Embley Park.
Cook, Edward. The Life of Florence Nightingale. Macmillan, 1913, 2 vols.
8n1, 39, 139
Having met FN at...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Arthur Pollard. Sylvia’s Lovers. Dent, 1964.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “The Doom of the Griffiths”. Harper’s Magazine, Vol.
16
, 1858, pp. 220-34.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press, 1967.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Smith, Elder, 1857, 2 vols.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Shelston, Alan, Penguin, 1975.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Birket Foster. The Moorland Cottage. Chapman and Hall, 1850.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. “The Old Nurse’s Story”. Household Words, Vol.
extra christmas number
, 1852, pp. 11-20.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell. Editors Shattock, Joanne et al., Pickering and Chatto, 2005, 10 vols.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and George Du Maurier. Wives and Daughters. Smith, Elder, 1866, 2 vols.
Gaskell, Elizabeth, and Margaret Lane. Wives and Daughters. Dent, 1966.