Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle An Autobiography. It recounts Charlotte Brontë's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a …

Mary Barton is beautiful but has been born poor. Her father fights for the rights of his fellow workers, but Mary wants to make a better life for them both. She rashly decides to reject her lover Jem, a struggling engineer, in the hope of marrying the rich mill-owner's son Henry Carson and securing a safe future. But …

In this witty and poignant comedy of early-Victorian life in a country town, Elizabeth Gaskell describes the uneventful lives of the lady-like inhabitants so as to offer an ironic commentary on the diverse experiences of men and women. This edition has detailed notes and a new introduction which discusses the …

Wives and Daughters is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. It was partly written whilst Gaskell was staying with the salon hostess Mary Elizabeth Mohl as her home on the Rue de Bac in Paris. When Mrs Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, it was …

"North and South" is Elizabeth Gaskell's 1854 novel that contrasts the different ways of life in the two respective regions of England. In the North the emerging industrialized society is sharply contrasted with the aging gentry of the agrarian based South. The plot of "North and South" centers around the main …