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.
IC
's article has a documentary feel typical of much social investigation literature, particularly the seamstress narrative popularized by writers such as Thomas Hood
, Henry Mayhew
, and Elizabeth Gaskell
in her novel Ruth...
A young Roman Catholic priest ministers to a tiny parish in the fictional south-coast town of Hattering. His patroness, Lady Welford, is dictatorial; his housekeeper, Mrs Lucas, is a bad cook, weakly indecisive, and sometimes...
Textual Features
Adelaide Procter
Milly's Expiation is interestingly reminiscent of Elizabeth Gaskell
's North and South, 1855 (to which the Athenæum compared it), and anticipatory of George Eliot
's Felix Holt, 1866. Milly is an idealised elder...
Textual Production
Annie Keary
AK
's next novel, Oldbury, was compared by some critics to Gaskell
's Cranford, because it is a study of a small provincial community, a backwater out of the mainstream.
The Spectator. F. C. Westley.
42 (1869): 683
Textual Production
Olivia Manning
After her return to England she sometimes wrote for the BBC
(with which her husband was now a producer), providing scripts for the long-running serial Mrs. Dale's Diary, one number in the series A...
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
Charlotte Brontë
CB
's third novel, Villette, was published in three volumes, delayed at Elizabeth Gaskell
's request to avoid simultaneous publication with Ruth.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
715
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jenkins
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...
Textual Production
Angela Thirkell
AT
provided an introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell
's Cranford in an edition published by The Novel Library.
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...
