Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to simply as
Mrs Gaskell was a British
novelist, born
Elizabeth Stevenson in
London in
1810. Much of her childhood was spent in
Cheshire, where she lived with an aunt at
Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as
Cranford. In
1832, she married a
Unitarian minister, William Gaskell, and they settled in
Manchester. The industrial surroundings would also offer inspiration for her novels.
Her first novel, Mary Barton[?], was published anonymously in 1848. The best-known of her remaining novels are Cranford (1853), North and South (1855), and Wives and Daughters (1865). She was a friend of Charles Dickens, and wrote a biography of Charlotte Bronte. She died suddenly in 1865. Mrs Gaskell today ranks as one of the most highly-regarded British novelists of the Victorian era.
e-texts of some of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell's works: