Elizabeth Gaskell
1810–1865
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Elizabeth Gaskell was the wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, the shock city of the Industrial Revolution. From its mills, slums and strikes she drew the material for Mary Barton (1848), the first great industrial novel — a story of working-class hunger written with an insider's sympathy that unsettled comfortable readers.
She went on to write Cranford (1851–53), the affectionate comedy of a town of spinsters, and North and South (1854–55), her sweeping drama of mill-owners and mill-hands that remains the definitive Victorian novel of industrial conflict. Dickens serialized her work in his magazines and admired her enormously.
When Charlotte Brontë died in 1855, Gaskell became her first biographer: The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) rescued Charlotte's reputation from gossip and fixed the image of the Brontës in the world's mind. Gaskell herself died in 1865, leaving her final novel, Wives and Daughters, unfinished.
Frequently asked
What did Elizabeth Gaskell write about?
Industrial England. From Manchester — the shock city of the Industrial Revolution — she drew Mary Barton (1848), the first great industrial novel, and North and South (1854–55), the definitive Victorian novel of industrial conflict.
Did Elizabeth Gaskell write about the Brontës?
Yes — when Charlotte Brontë died in 1855, Gaskell wrote the first biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), which rescued Charlotte's reputation from gossip and fixed the image of the Brontës in the world's mind.
What is Cranford?
Cranford (1851–53) is Gaskell's affectionate comedy of a town of spinsters — based on the Knutsford of her childhood — a gentle counterpoint to her hard-hitting industrial fiction.
Why it matters today
Gaskell invented social-realist industrial fiction and wrote the biography that created the Brontë myth — her North and South is still the benchmark TV and film return to for Victorian class conflict.
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The Brontës
Three sisters from a Yorkshire parsonage who wrote two of the most passionate novels ever published.
Oscar Wilde
The wittiest man in London — until Victorian morality put him on trial.