A recent review of Mrs. Gaskell's critical reputation divided her critics into three camps. One group, now fading, still treats her mainly as the author of Cranford (1853). A second emphasizes her "social-problem" novels but insists that they be...

For some critics Elizabeth Gaskell was a conventional, middle-class Victorian wife and mother who accepted the values of her world and who also happened to write books--a feminine dove among literary eagles Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, to...

A recent review of Mrs. Gaskell's critical reputation divided her critics into three camps. One group, now fading, still treats her mainly as the author of Cranford (1853). A second emphasizes her "social-problem" novels but insists that they be...

Upon hearing of the death of her friend Charlotte Brontë on 31 March 1855, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell wrote, "I loved her dearly, more than I think she knew. I shall never cease to be thankful that I knew her; or to mourn her loss." It was out of...

The English author Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) wrote sociological novels that explored the ills of industrial England and novels of small-town life that are penetrating studies of character. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born on Sept. 29, 1810....