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.
PB
's Reader, I Married Him: A Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen
, Charlotte Brontë
, Elizabeth Gaskell
, and George Eliot was a harbinger of serious critical interest in the women's literary tradition.
Sherry, Vincent B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 40. Gale Research, 1985.
25
Textual Production
Henry James
Although HJ
is best remembered as a novelist, he was also a prolific and insightful critic of literature and the arts. Over the course of his career he reviewed many novels by British women writers...
Textual Production
Angela Thirkell
AT
provided an introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell
's Cranford in an edition published by The Novel Library.
EJ
contributed an introduction to a volume, the seventh in John Lehmann
's The Chiltern Library, published in 1947 and containing two titles by Elizabeth Gaskell
. In her introduction to Thackeray
's Vanity...
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), remained unpublished, for reasons that are...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The Blackstick Papers treat a wide range of topics; three of the thirteen concern women writers, and the book's frontispiece is from a miniature of Felicia Hemans
.ATR
notes the stoicism
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Blackstick Papers. Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
GJ
was an advocate of realist novels with well drawn characters and a coherent plot. Her review of Charlotte Chanter
's Over the Cliffs compared the plot to a child's attempt at drawing a picture,—the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Tytler
Clearly delighted with the opportunity to mix in literary circles, ST
recorded her personal observations of these authors in Men and Women Met by the Way, the final 100-page-long section of her family autobiography...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Muriel Jaeger
This book is sometimes called a memoir, but its autobiographical moments are only incidental. MJ
's attention is mostly directed towards books and reading; her own experiences of writing, publishing, and having her works performed...
