Elizabeth Gaskell — from the portrait by George Richmond

Photograph taken late in Gaskell's life

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (n�e Stevenson; 29 September 1810–12 November 1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Bronte.

Life

Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson at 93 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London in 1810. Her mother, Eliza Holland, was from a prominent Midlands family that was well connected with other Unitarian and prominent families like the Wedgwoods and the Darwins, but she died when Elizabeth was a child. Her father, William Stevenson, was a Unitarian minister, and also a writer and remarried after Eliza's death.

Much of her childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with an aunt, Mrs Lumb, in Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as Cranford.

She also spent some time in Newcastle upon Tyne and Edinburgh. Her stepmother was a sister of the Scottish miniature artist, William John Thomson, who painted a famous portrait of Elizabeth in 1832.

In the same year, she married William Gaskell, the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester who had a literary career of his own. They settled in Manchester where the industrial surroundings would offer inspiration for her novels (in the industrial novel genre). The circles in which the Gaskells moved included religious dissenters and social reformers, including William and Mary Howitt.

Gaskell died in Holybourne, Hampshire in 1865 aged 55.

Works

Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. The best-known of her remaining novels are Cranford (1853), North and South (1854), and Wives and Daughters (1865).

She became popular for her writing, especially her ghost story writing, aided by her friend Charles Dickens, who published her work in Household Words. Her ghost stories are quite distinct in style from her industrial fiction and belong to the Gothic fiction genre.

Even though her writing conforms to Victorian conventions (including signing her name "Mrs. Gaskell"), Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of Victorian era attitudes, particularly those toward women, with complex narratives and dynamic women characters.^[1]

In addition to her fiction, Gaskell also wrote the first biography of Charlotte Bront�, which played a significant role in developing her fellow writer's reputation.

Dialect usage

Gaskell's style is notable for putting local dialect words into the voice of middle-class characters and of the narrator; for example in North and South, Margaret Hale suggests redding up (tidying) the Bouchers' house and even offers jokingly to teach her mother words such as knobstick (strike-breaker).^[2] Her husband collected Lancashire dialect, and Gaskell defended her use of dialect as expressing otherwise inexpressible concepts in an 1854 letter to Walter Savage Landor:^[2]

'...you will remember the country people's use of the word "unked". I can't find any other word to express the exact feeling of strange unusual desolate discomfort, and I sometimes "potter" and "mither" people by using it.'^[3]

The earliest traceable use of the dialect word nesh (soft) in literature was in The Manchester Marriage, written by Gaskell in 1858:

"Now, I'm not above being nesh for other folks myself. I can stand a good blow, and never change colour; but, set me in the operating-room in the Infirmary, and I turn as sick as a girl."

"At Mrs Wilson's death, Norah came back to them, as nurse to the newly-born little Edwin; into which post she was not installed without a pretty strong oration on the part of the proud and happy father; who declared that if he found out that Norah ever tried to screen the boy by a falsehood, or to make him nesh either in body or mind, she should go that very day."^[4]

Publications

Novels

• Mary Barton (1848)
• Cranford (1851-3)
• Ruth (1853)
• North and South (1854-5)
• Sylvia's Lovers (1863)
• Cousin Phillis (1864)
• Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)

Collections

• The Moorland Cottage (1850)
• The Old Nurse's Story (1852)
• Lizzie Leigh (1855)
• My Lady Ludlow (1859)
• Round the Sofa (1859)
• Lois the Witch (1861)
• A Dark Night's Work (1863)

Short stories (partial)

• The Squire's Story (1853)
• Half a Life-time Ago (1855)
• An Accursed Race (1855)
• The Manchester Marriage (1858)
• The Half-brothers (1859)
• The Grey Woman (1861)

Non-fiction

• The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857)

References