Novelists 19 Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) The daughter of William Stevenson, a Unitarian minister, she also married a Manchester based Unitarian minister. In 1848 she published anonymously her first novel, Mary Barton, in which the life and feelings of the manufacturing working classes are depicted with much power and sympathy. Other novels followed, the novella Mr. Harrison’s Confessions [1851], Ruth [1853], Cranford (1851-53), North and South [1855], Sylvia’s Lovers [1863], etc. Her last work was Wives and Daughters [1865], which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, and was left unfinished. In 1910 John Cousin wrote of Gaskell as having some of the characteristics of Jane Austen. He said “if her style and delineation of character are less minutely perfect, they are, on the other hand, imbued with a deeper vein of feeling”. She was the friend of Charlotte Bronté and wrote her biography. Of Cranford Lord Houghton wrote, “It is the finest piece of humoristic description that has been added to British literature since Charles Lamb.” He works include several novellas and short stories and some non-fiction. She sometimes co-wrote with Dickens, Wilkie Collins and others.