1885 novel by elizabeth gaskell biography

Popular and critically notable English writer of the Victorian term who wrote six novels, the canonical biography of Charlotte Brontë, several nouvelles, some 30 short stories, and copious sketches. Name variations: Mrs. Gaskell; Lily; Cotton Mather Mills (early pseudonym). Pronunciation: GAS-kull. Born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson implication September 29, 1810, at Chelsea, Writer, England; died on November 16, 1865, at Alton in Hampshire; daughter entrap William Stevenson (a Unitarian minister, smallholder, writer, teacher, keeper of the rolls museum of the Treasury) and Elizabeth (Holland) Stevenson; attended school at Barford topmost Stratford-upon-Avon; married William Gaskell (a Protestantism minister), in 1832; children: daughter (stillborn, 1833); Marianne Gaskell (b. 1834); Margaret Emily Gaskell (b. 1837); Florence Elizabeth Gaskell (b. 1842); William (1844–1845); Julia Bradford Gaskell (b. 1846).

Spent her youth among deceased mother's family in Knutsford, Cheshire; spent five years at lodging school in her teens, then visited family and friends in London, Port, Edinburgh, and Manchester until marrying rag age 22 and settling permanently nervous tension Manchester; worked with her husband presume philanthropic and educational projects among Manchester's working class in the early period of marriage, during which she gave birth to six children; began script for publication (1845) after the mortality of her son; published Mary Barton, her first novel (1848); met City Brontë, subject of her biography (1850); was a popular and successful author (1850s–60s) while maintaining a strong life, cultivating extensive social and seasoned relationships, enjoying foreign travel, and eternal her philanthropic activities among the poor; died at a new country go-ahead she had purchased for her mushroom her husband's retirement (1865).

Selected writings:

(novel) Set Barton: A Tale of Manchester Sure of yourself (1848); (novel) Cranford (1853); (novel) Agony (1853); (novel) North and South (1855); (biography) The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857); (novel) Sylvia's Lovers (1863); (nouvelle) Cousin Phillis: A Tale (1864); (novel) Wives and Daughters: An Every-day Narration (serialized in the Cornhill Magazine, 1864–66).

Family relationships are at the center be bought Elizabeth Gaskell's writing; their permutations—for mend or worse—shape the comedy, tragedy, emotion, and romance of her novels put up with stories, just as they inform blue blood the gentry sympathetic reading she gives her sphere in her distinguished biography of Charlotte Brontë . Gaskell's preoccupation with grandeur intricate and delicate nature of consanguinity ties—or the lack of them—can skin traced to her own childhood.

Her daddy William Stevenson, from a naval kindred, became a Unitarian preacher. He omitted the ministry shortly before his nuptials because he developed scruples about reception payment for preaching the word motionless God. Her mother Elizabeth Holland Stevenson , whose family had its race in rural Cheshire, was also Disciple, a sect regarded at the put on the back burner as the most unorthodox, and modern some quarters, the most radical with the addition of dangerous of dissenting religious groups. Grandeur sense of community among Unitarians whenever and wherever they met, and significance value they placed on education, magnanimity, rationality, and humanitarianism, would have graceful lasting influence on Elizabeth's life.

After abandoning the ministry, William Stevenson was gross turns a teacher, farmer, editor, illustrious writer until he gained an apprehension as keeper of the records senior the Treasury, a post that ultimately guaranteed him the income to prop a family. While he was analytical his bearings, his wife gave delivery to eight children, of whom single the first-born, John, and the latest, Elizabeth, survived. Elizabeth Holland Stevenson suitably 13 months after her daughter's birth.

After the death of her mother, Elizabeth was sent, in what seemed trite the time the best arrangement straighten out the year-old child, to live free her maternal aunt, Hannah Holland Lumb , whom she later described likewise her "more than mother," in excellence small country town of Knutsford terminate Cheshire. Although her father married regulate when she was four, Elizabeth was not invited to return to government home in London, and she alleged her infrequent visits with her holy man, stepmother, and their two children by the same token "very, very unhappy." Among her mother's relatives, however, she enjoyed a youth in which the love of entail extended family—Aunt Lumb and her girl, her uncle Peter Holland, aunts, cousins, and maternal grandparents who lived watchword a long way far from town—nourished a warm good turn impressionable nature. From the 12 length of existence she spent in Knutsford, Gaskell gained a deep and lasting love game nature that finds expression even lead to those works of hers dealing wellnigh entirely with urban themes and settings.

While it does not seem that unconditional father, occupied by his second kith and kin, visited her in Knutsford, her relation John, 12 years her senior, blunt. Following the naval tradition of reward father's family, John hoped for skilful career in the Royal Navy on the other hand, gaining no entree there, joined goodness Merchant Navy with the East Bharat Company's fleet. Through letters and climax visits, the brother and sister complex strong bonds of affection, and Crapper was the first to encourage Elizabeth's gift for writing. He asked protected to keep a journal so saunter she would have plenty to voice drift to him in her letters. That warm and intimate relationship ended tragically when he was lost on graceful voyage to India around 1828. Elizabeth felt this loss deeply; she ulterior transformed it imaginatively in several hegemony her works that involve the reinstate of a character who has back number lost and presumed dead.

In 1822, Writer was sent to the Miss Byerleys' school, located at Barford and following at Stratford-upon-Avon, a boarding school swivel she received a good education bolster a woman of her day, enjoy keeping with the liberal Unitarian aid organization that offered women educational opportunities unrivaled in quality to those given rank and file. At a time when most embarkation schools prepared middle-class young women get into marriage by emphasizing domestic and embellishing arts, Miss Byerleys' Avonbank School pleased the development of Elizabeth's intellectual gifts and imagination with its emphasis ingredient modern subjects: literature, history, and advanced languages. She left school in 1827, shortly before her 17th birthday, arm went with her Holland relatives own a six-week holiday in Wales, the romantic wildness and grandeur asset the Welsh mountains and sea if a complementary dimension to the passion of nature she had developed divide the quiet and gently rolling arcadian landscapes of Knutsford and Stratford. Writer went to London at the excise of 1828 or early 1829 enter upon comfort her father when she au fait of her brother's loss and was with him when he suffered natty stroke and died in March 1829. Now motherless, fatherless, brotherless, she matte her lack of immediate family profoundly, even though she knew she would always have a home at Knutsford. To her father's second family, she felt no strong connections; she sincere not see her stepmother and sis again for 25 years.

Elizabeth spent significance winter of 1829–30 in Newcastle bend Anne Turner and her father Man of the cloth William Turner, a widowed Unitarian itinerary and schoolmaster related by his important marriage to Elizabeth's mother. In 1831, with Anne, Elizabeth visited Edinburgh charge Manchester, where Anne's sister lived connote her husband, the Unitarian minister portend the Cross Street chapel, to whom William Gaskell was assistant minister. Rank dedicated and scholarly Mr. Gaskell, justness city of Manchester, and the Protestantism tradition would shape the next 33 years of maturity for the motherless child of Knutsford and the griefstricken young woman of London by bestowal her the three things that preconcerted most to her: a family unravel her own, a sense of serviceable work in service to others, service a vocation as a writer.

When she married William Gaskell in 1832, Elizabeth Stevenson committed herself to the holy and philanthropic principles of the Disciple community of family and friends she had known all her life. On the other hand these principles were to find their practice in Manchester of the 1830s, a prototypical north of England throw away created by the Industrial Revolution. Plug 1832, Manchester was a city able an economy based on cotton grind and calico-printers' works. Attracted by rank work and wages offered by excellence rapidly growing cotton industry, the humanity had grown in 40 years let alone approximately 40,000 to over a thirteen weeks of a million. The cotton organization were housed in the center splash the city in cheap, quickly constructed, back-to-back terrace houses and courts, which, because of lack of planning, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions, rapidly degenerated link the worst urban slums in England. Although like most of the traditional inhabitants of Manchester, the Gaskells flybynight on the edge of the burgh in a relatively rural setting, distinction social work they engaged in vindicate the Cross Street Chapel brought both—unlike others of their class who under no circumstances crossed the smoke barrier that divided the factories, warehouses, and working-class districts from their homes—into close contact exchange the conditions of physical, spiritual, stall moral decay that were by-products sell the "progress" of the Industrial Revolt. In her fourth novel, North bear South, Elizabeth Gaskell describes from primacy perspective of her heroine Margaret Hearty what may very well have antediluvian her own first impression of Manchester:

They saw a deep lead-coloured cloud noose know the ropes be over the horizon in the method in which [the city] lay. Levelly was all the darker from loftiness contrast with the pale grey-blue fail the wintry sky…. Nearer to nobility town, the air had a wishywashy taste and smell of smoke…. Promptly they were hurled over long, good, hopeless streets of regularly-built houses, resistance small and of brick. Here flourishing there a great oblong many-windowed shop stood up, like a hen mid her chickens, puffing out black "unparliamentary" smoke, and sufficiently accounting for nobility cloud.

Into this paradoxical city of different wealth and poverty, the promise admit progress and the evidence of slump, Elizabeth brought the sympathy that confidential been nourished by her Knutsford lifetime and the conscience and egalitarianism imbedded by the Unitarian values with which she grew up. In the precisely years of her marriage, she wedded conjugal her husband in his work sustain Sunday schools and evening classes. Worship a letter written in 1836 she reports completing "compositions" on Wordsworth, Poet, Crabbe, Dryden, and Pope for fine series of lectures William delivered shakeup the evening school of the Mechanics' Institute for Working-Class Men. Throughout gibe life in Manchester, she engaged break down social work, visiting prisons and factories; helping young women who had bent seduced and abandoned to find pristine lives abroad; and teaching classes appearance the poor in her home. Coral Lansbury reports, "For her the slums were never a strange and hidden world to be seen from outlying, but familiar places of dismal catastrophe where she could see and snuffle poverty."

While her sympathy and energy were engaged in efforts to ameliorate excellence harsh conditions of working-class life take delivery of Manchester, she also suffered personally while in the manner tha her first child was stillborn populate 1833. Her loss and subsequent set down caused anxiety about her next kid, Marianne Gaskell , born in 1834, and she dealt with her be seated by keeping a journal, ostensibly save record her daughter's development, but evidently also to alleviate her fear attend to give expression to her own median life. A second daughter, Margaret Emily Gaskell , called Meta, was intelligent in 1837. Elizabeth had hardly better her strength after this birth just as she went to Knutsford with give someone the boot month-old infant to nurse her Tease Lumb through her final illness. Get going the period of depression that followed her aunt's death, Gaskell found support and distraction in writing to in sync growing circle of correspondents and rotation helping William research and write preference series of lectures on "The Poets and Poetry of Humble Life."

One cut into her correspondents was Mary Howitt , an established writer who wrote incumbency for literary journals with her lay by or in William Howitt. In 1838, the Howitts announced plans to publish a gratuitous on Visits to Remarkable Places, topmost Elizabeth wrote suggesting they do top-hole piece on Clopton Hall at Stratford-upon-Avon and describing her own visit present-day as a schoolgirl. William Howitt tendency her description in his volume captain urged her to consider writing implication publication. But at this point shaggy dog story her life, Gaskell wrote for depiction personal satisfaction she received from control up her lively correspondence and afflict daughter's journal, or from her certitude that the writing she and William were doing for his lectures would have a salutary effect on probity lives of the working class. Winifred Gérin suggests, however, that:

though as so far unconsciously, Elizabeth was finding the issue of her own future work—work prowl would be distinct from her husband's educational programme for introducing beauty added poetry into the lives of significance working poor. What Elizabeth was discovering in her as yet early coach with the sad lives of birth operatives… was that beauty and plan were already there in their lives; this revelation stirred her profoundly.

The Gaskells' third daughter, Florence Elizabeth Gaskell , was born in 1842, and fit in 1844, they were delighted by loftiness birth of their first son, William. Elizabeth doted on her son coupled with was shocked and grieved by government sudden death of scarlet fever truss months after his birth. Fearing span depression similar to the one she had suffered following the death counterfeit her Aunt Lumb, and knowing defer writing had the capacity to feed her fully, William suggested that Elizabeth write a full-length book to forward her from her grief. And and, in 1845, she began writing Mary Barton, the novel that would set up her famous.

A good writer of anecdote must have lived an active viewpoint sympathetic life if she wishes troop books to have strength and existence in them.

—Elizabeth Gaskell

Mary Barton: A Chronicle of Manchester Life, which Elizabeth designated as a "tragic poem," grew dedicate of both her personal sorrow advocate the sympathy she felt for dignity sorrows of Manchester's working poor. Plant during the commercial crisis that ushered in the depression of the "hungry forties" and the Chartist and Establishment Union movements, the novel develops topping theme that would occupy the finest minds of England for the consequent decades—the theme of the "two nations": the separate worlds of the comfortable and the poor, of "masters stomach men," explored in the writings fail Benjamin Disraeli, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Kingsley, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and Apostle Arnold. The novel aroused controversy as Gaskell's sympathies were clearly with mix hero, John Barton, a worker compulsive by hunger, injustice, and despair distribute murder a factory owner's son. She does not condone what Barton has done any more than he receptacle forgive himself for his crime; even so, through her skillful plotting of decency events leading to the murder, throw over insightful development of Barton's character, don her vivid descriptions of life amidst the working poor, Gaskell shows extravaganza a decent, intelligent man can designate led to commit desperate acts during the time that forced to live under intolerable conditions.

The novel, published anonymously in 1848, was a great success, not only as of the timeliness of its thesis, but because of the power remind you of its story, its characters, and sheltered vivid evocation of urban life. Hem in a short time, it became extensively known that "Mrs. Gaskell" was picture author of Mary Barton, and, what because she visited London in the flow of 1849, she was greeted toddler the literary establishment as a eminence and entertained at social events at she met such writers as Saint Carlyle, Samuel Rogers, and Charles Writer, with whom she would have uncomplicated long if somewhat stressful professional relationship.

For the rest of her life, expressions was a vocation to Elizabeth Gaskell; she loved her work, and she was more than pleased with description payment she received for her verbal skill. Although by law she was grateful to turn over her earnings figure up her husband (the Married Women's Belongings Act, which gave married women a-ok right to retain their earnings, was not passed until 1870), William Author apparently was not strict about insistence upon his legal rights, and Elizabeth was able to save enough censure her income to purchase a privacy home for them both. Unlike Metropolis Brontë or George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans ), Gaskell did not have confidence in on writing for a livelihood, status so her sense of professionalism industrial gradually. Ever mindful of the void in her life she felt since a child for want of leadership love of a mother, she took up her writing only after she took care of family responsibilities. According to Angus Easson, after her only remaining child, Julia Bradford Gaskell , was born in 1846, Elizabeth wrote observe the evenings, when all household plus family duties were done, or adjustment holiday, or during family absences—whenever she found the chance.

Nor did she be deprived of interest in the social work walk had become part of her urbanity in Manchester. In fact, she grateful use of her introduction to Devil by writing to him in 1850 to ask his advice in composition for the emigration of a junior dressmaker's apprentice who had been seduced, sent to the penitentiary, lured attentive prostitution, and seemed destined for dignity short, hopeless life of an oppidan Victorian prostitute unless she had eminence opportunity to begin her life newly. Knowing that Dickens was interested charge helping such young women gain clever start abroad, she applied for turf received his assistance. The story regard the young woman inspired the cabal of her next novel, Ruth, accessible in 1853, which again stirred argumentation because of the sympathy and incident the author creates for the difficulty of the all-too-common "fallen woman" eliminate the Victorian age. Clearly, some chide Gaskell's Manchester neighbors who burned blue blood the gentry book did not share her slant. However, literary and religious leaders who came to the defense of influence novel turned the tide in wear smart clothes favor by praising Gaskell's courage reveal her choice and treatment of neat largely unacknowledged social problem.

In 1850, Author had invited Gaskell to contribute equal his new weekly, Household Words. She accepted his invitation and sent "Lizzie Leigh," a story based on City life, for the first issue. Deuce was pleased with the piece, abide thereafter pressed her to continue give someone the boot contributions to his journal. Because loom her other obligations, the pieces upfront not come as quickly and despite the fact that often as Dickens would have liked; nonetheless, both he and his readers were delighted by the series obey sketches she sent him from 1851 to 1853, the series that would become perhaps her most loved spot on, Cranford.

Cranford strikes an entirely different video than Mary Barton and Ruth. Press place of the urban settings cope with pressing social problems of the below novels, Cranford reverts to the upcountry artless setting and slower pace of authentic in an early 19th-century village supported on Gaskell's memories of Knutsford. Blue blood the gentry tragic tone of Mary Barton take up the pathos of Ruth are replaced by quiet humor and gentle imitation as Gaskell lovingly describes her "society of Amazons," the eccentric aging cadre who govern the village. They prepare "elegant economy" and "friendly sociability" introduce they band together to protect only another and their way of courage against all that threatens to violate their fragile world of declining accident and powers.

Because of Cranford's great welfare in Household Words, Dickens was enthusiastic to secure a commitment from Author for another work, and she congealed, with some hesitation, to the publishing of a novel still in nobleness conceptual stage, a novel that was to contrast the landscapes, values, bracket social customs of the agricultural southerly of England with the industrial ad northerly. In North and South, Gaskell receipts to the "masters and men" notion of Mary Barton in the primary issue of the strike that pits workers against factory owners, but she sets this conflict in the greater social context developed through the link families who constitute her cast tip major characters: the Hales, who relay to Milton-Northern (Manchester) from the meridional village of Helstone in search confiscate a livelihood after Mr. Hale leaves his ministry because of "scruples"; bid the Thorntons, a family made not long ago wealthy by the expanding industrial retrenchment of the north. As Margaret Be never-ending and John Thornton overcome their rewarding and prejudice in the love district of the novel, Gaskell suggests rove a similar honest attempt at knowledge and communication between masters and troops body can lead to a reconciliation fanatic class conflicts. In a letter get through to Dickens, Gaskell conceded after its rub that North and South was beg for the book she had hoped be patient would be; as she told him, "I meant it to have bent so much better." Both her check and Dickens' impatience with her lasting the serialization can be attributed type the fact that the pressures tube conventions of weekly serial publication were not congenial to her temperament put out of order talent.

The stress she experienced in chirography the installments of North and South did not make her eager summit take on another major writing obligation until 1855, when she was astound to learn of the death entity Charlotte Brontë as a result lay into complications of pregnancy less than ingenious year after her marriage to Clergyman Arthur Bell Nicholls. Elizabeth Gaskell endure Charlotte Brontë had become fast society and professional colleagues since their foremost meeting in 1850. Anticipating that Priest Patrick Brontë, Charlotte's father, would entity to a biography, Gaskell considered penmanship a memoir, not to be publicized for some time, in which she would record personal recollections of complex friend still fresh in her recollection. She was therefore surprised when Apostle Brontë proposed, with Nicholls' consent, wind she write the authorized biography. Send someone away motive in writing the Life tension Charlotte Brontë was "to make class world… honour the woman as practically as they have admired the writer," and she undertook her task improve a spirit of friendship and professionalism that made it both an dear portrait of an enigmatic woman accept a compelling psychological study of blue blood the gentry sources of Brontë's creative power. Gaskell's interpretation of Brontë in the case of the desolate Yorkshire landscape unthinkable her tragic family situation came intelligibly to a novelist whose works confidential always emphasized environment and family chimp the shaping forces of character. Though new information has come to pleasure since it was written, the Life remains a standard work on Brontë. According to Lansbury, it "has antique acclaimed as the best biography closing stages the nineteenth century and one surrounding the finest in the English language."

Following the publication of the Life ready money 1857, Gaskell was occupied with character concerns of her maturing daughters nearby with relief work associated with leadership Manchester Cotton Famine of 1862–63. She published pieces from time to offend in Household Words and in blue blood the gentry new Cornhill Magazine while she la-di-da orlah-di-dah on Sylvia's Lovers, a historical original set in a Yorkshire fishing local during the Napoleonic wars, when lower ranks from English coastal villages had bent kidnapped and pressed into service directive the navy. In the tale obey a harpooner who disappears and takings years later to find his passion married to a rival, Gaskell develops a tragic plot set among picture humble classes of the harsh Yorkshire coast. As in Mary Barton put up with North and South, she interweaves shipshape and bristol fashion public theme, in this case dignity tyranny of impressment and the baleful it generates, with a love fact. But whereas love served the topic of reconciliation in the earlier novels, Sylvia's Lovers explores the tragic aspects of passionate love, jealousy, and fascination. Through the vividly realized setting, prestige historical distancing, and the depiction accept characters caught in conflict between fondness and morality, the novel becomes pattern in its evocation of powers outwith human control shaping human destiny.

Most critics agree that the works of Gaskell's final years, Cousin Phillis in 1864 and the unfinished Wives and Daughters, published in the Cornhill Magazine unearth 1864 to 1866, mark Gaskell's untouchable achievement as an artist. Both plant return to the village settings albatross her childhood, and each in well-fitting way is a perfect representation flaxen a mood or tone over which she had gained mastery. Cousin Phillis, an idyllic nouvelle, captures a juvenile woman and a family at precise moment of transition between an agricultural way of life with its meaningless of rootedness in time and rite and an industrial age in which people move optimistically toward a tomorrow's with little time for backward glances. Through the story of Phillis, left-wing behind in her old-world village infant the young railroad engineer who seeks his fortunes in the new universe, Gaskell creates a subtle mood digress verges on both tragedy and romanticism but avoids either as she brings her readers to full awareness give a rough idea the irrevocable loss of the foregoing and its innocence.

Wives and Daughters, Gaskell's novel of "everyday" life, reflects character full range of Gaskell's experiences service reflections on the nature of cover relationships in the story of Topminnow Gibson's development through her motherless minority, her beloved father's remarriage to fine frivolous widow, her relationship with skilful stepsister whose vanity and thoughtlessness update faults of her upbringing, to on his realization of the value of one-off worth, love, and tolerance. Reminiscent walk up to Jane Austen in its treatment spot three or four families in marvellous country village, the open and unhurried plot of a young woman's come again of age allows for the replete display of Gaskell's mature talents.

Elizabeth Writer died in 1865, while staying pertain to three of her daughters at nobleness country home she had recently purchased with earnings from her writing on account of a surprise for her husband put under somebody's nose their retirement. Her sudden death came at a moment of fullness. She had lived to see her progeny grown and happy and her groom busy but content with his work; she had traveled throughout Europe survive made enduring friendships with people she loved and admired; she was darling and respected by the working humanity of Manchester, whose lives she difficult to understand touched personally and chronicled sympathetically; present-day she was esteemed as a hack who belonged in the distinguished fellowship of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, endure Charlotte Brontë in making the Nineteenth century the great period of probity English novel.

sources:

Easson, Angus. Elizabeth Gaskell. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

Gérin, Winifred. Elizabeth Gaskell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

Hopkins, A.B. Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life obscure Work. London: John Lehman, 1952.

Lansbury, Maroon. Elizabeth Gaskell. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1984.

The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell. Ed. indifferent to J.A.V. Chapple and A. Pollard. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966.

suggested reading:

The Pack up Works of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. Knutsford Edition. Ed. by A.W. Ward. 8 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1906.

Stoneman, Sucker. Elizabeth Gaskell. IN: Indiana University Repress, 1987.

Uglow, Jenny. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Consistent of Stories. NY: Farrar, Straus, 1993.

PatriciaB.Heaman , Professor of English, Wilkes Installation, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania