Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell

Life

Elizabeth Gaskell was the second surviving child of the marriage between William Stevenson and Elizabeth Holland. The daughter was born as Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on the 29th of September 1810 in Chelsea, London.

Elizabeth’s father was a Unitarian minister in Manchester. After her mother died one year after Elizabeth’s birth, she had to move to Knutsford in Cheshire and live with her aunt Hannah Holland, who was also known as “Aunt Lumb”, to whom she had a very good relationship.

From then on she only lived with her father from time to time. He married his second wife in 1814, which was a “very, very unhappy” time for Elizabeth.

In 1821, she began to study at Miss Byerlys’ school at Barford House. But later on she was sent to Avonbank School in Stratford upon Avon. She left this school in 1826 and went to London. On the 20th of March 1829 her father suffered a stroke and died two days later.

In 1831 in Edinburgh she met her future husband William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister like her father had been. They married in 1832 and moved to Manchester, where she gave birth to her five children Marianne, Meta, Florence Elizabeth, Julia and her son William, who died of scarlet fever shortly after his birth.

His death was an inspiration for Elizabeth to write her first novel Mary Barton, which was published anonymously in 1848. It was a great success and was praised by Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens. The latter offered her to make contributions to his magazine “Household Words”.

Being a good friend of Charlotte Brontë Elizabeth was asked by Charlotte’s father to write her biography. This biography Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857.

Elizabeth Gaskell died in Hampshire on the 12th of November 1865 leaving the novel Wives and Daughters incomplete.

Works

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848)

Ruth (1853)

Cranford (1853)

North and South (1855)

Lizzie Leigh and other Tales (1855)

Life of Charlotte Brontë (1856)

My Lady Ludow (1858)

Adam Bede (1859)

Round the Sofa and other Tales (1859)

Lois the Witch and other Tales (1861)

The Grey Woman (1861)

A Dark Night’s Work (1863)

Cousin Phillis (1864)

Wives and Daughters (1864)

Easson, Angus. Elizabeth Gaskell. London: Routledge & Paul, 1979.

Matus, Jill L. The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/gaskell_elizabeth.shtml

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