Born: 29 September 1810, United Kingdom
Died: 12 November 1865
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Elizabeth Stevenson
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
English novelist and biographer, born in Chelsea, London. Her mother died when she was only a few weeks old, and the babe was brought up by her aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire, the village she afterward idealized in “Cranford.” She later went to school at Stratford-on-Avon, and in 1832 married the Rev. William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister. In her earlier married life Mrs. Gaskell was mainly occupied with domestic duties—she had seven children—and philanthropic work among the poor. In 1848 she published “Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life,” a powerful and moving story of the industrial poor, as she herself had observed them in Manchester. After a number of other stories came the incomparable “Cranford,” the most popular of her books, an idyll of village life, largely inspired by girlish memories of. Knutsford and its people. Having established her reputation as a novelist, she also gave evidence of her great talent as a biographer by her “Life of Charlotte Brontë” which appeared in 1857.
Since Mrs. Gaskell’s death in 1865 she has continued to be widely read. “Cranford” has been published in many forms with many illustrators, while the “Life of Charlotte Brontë” is accepted as a standard work.
Richard D. Graham in his “Masters of Victorian Literature” says: In Cranford Mrs. Gaskell lovingly sets forth the genteel poverty, the innocent self-respecting pride, the quaint humours, and the gentle charities of a society of elderly spinsters and widows without children. Nothing could be done more simply, exquisitely, or with a higher air of truth. To have read Cranford is to have personally known the sleepy old place, and to have come forever under the power of its charm.”
Clement K. Shorter, who was himself a biographer of Charlotte Brontë, pays this tribute: “In the whole of English biographical literature there is no book that can compare in wide-spread interest with the Life of Charlotte Brontë by Mrs. Gaskell, and it still commands a place side by side with Boswell’s Johnson and Lockhart’s Scott. All those literary gifts which made the charm of her volumes of romance were employed upon a romance of real life, not less fascinating than anything which imagination could have furnished. It is quite certain that Charlotte Brontë would not stand on so splendid a pedestal to-day, but for the single- minded devotion of her accomplished biographer.” .
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
Elizabeth C. Gaskell, English Novelist of Industrial Life, 1810 – 1865 A.D.
Her great work was Mary Barton: a Tale of Manchester Life. The book was to the factory people of England what Uncle Tom’s Cabin became to the colored race in America. She was among the first to get at the heart of the great multitude of factory operatives. Her portrayal is pathetic and even painful, but she had to deal with a painful subject, and she was true to life in her descriptions. Hard times, political agitation, and strikes — all the great questions as between labor and capital are brought out in this book, which appeared in 1848. The labor question is not a new one. Mrs. Gaskell was a pioneer in this line. We cannot do better than to allow her to speak for herself. Note the sympathetic heart and the keen observation in the following:
I had always felt a deep sympathy with the careworn men who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want. A little manifestation of this sympathy, and a little attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the work people, had laid open to me the hearts of the more thoughtful among them. I saw that they were sore and irritable against the rich. Whether the bitter complaints were well founded or no, it is not for me to judge. It is enough to say that this belief of injustice and unkindness which they endure from their fellow creatures, taints what might be resignation to God’s will and turns it to revenge in too many poor uneducated factory workers in Manchester.
Mrs. Gaskell’s husband was a Unitarian clergyman of Manchester.
Her other works were, in part, Moorland Cottage, North and South, Right at Last, Wives and Daughters. The one that attracted greatest attention was The life of Charlotte Bronté. This was charmingly written and furnishes many interesting incidents and details of her private life of Miss Bronté, as the two women were close and personal friends.
In her novels she occasionally introduces the Lancashire dialect with great effectiveness. As a portrayer of the lights and shades of artisan life, Mrs. Gaskell has few equals.