Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810–65,) née Stevenson, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the poor. They are of interest to social historians as well as readers of literature.
Gaskell was born in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London. Her father was in sequence a Unitarian teacher, preacher, farmer, boarding-house keeper, writer, and keeper of the records to the Treasury. Elizabeth was brought up by an aunt in Knutsford (the Cranford of her stories.)
In 1832, Gaskell married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister in Manchester. There she studied working men and women and made significant contributions to what came to be known as the ‘Condition of England’ novel.
Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton (1848,) anonymously. It won the praise of Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle. Mary Barton was followed by The Moorland Cottage (1850,) Cranford (1853,) Ruth (1853,) North and South (1855,) Round the Sofa (1859,) Right at Last (1860,) Sylvia’s Lovers (1863,) and Cousin Phillis (1865.)
Gaskell’s last and longest work, Wives and Daughters (1864–66,) concerning the interlocking fortunes of two or three country families, is considered by many her finest, was left unfinished at her death. Gaskell also wrote The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) at the urging of her father, Patrick Brontë.
The British biographer Jenny Uglow wrote Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (1999.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Elizabeth Gaskell
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Fools, Foolishness
I’ll not listen to reason … . Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Reason
How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly!
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Judgment, Judging, Judges
That kind of patriotism which consists of hating all other nations.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Xenophobia
My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal a feeling.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people’s minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Faults, Mistakes
A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Parents, Parenting
A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Belief
Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used—not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through,—to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Romance
To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Marriage
He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, and leanness goes a great way towards gentility.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
Topics: Man, Mankind, Body
Madam your wife and I didn’t hit it off the only time I ever saw her. I won’t say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it wasn’t me.
—Elizabeth Gaskell
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