Manchester
Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell, Farmer?
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomWe're delighted to welcome guest speaker Jackie Tucker to our first Cross Street Chapel Manchester meeting in oooh... absolutely ages! We hope you'll be able to join us. In 1851 Elizabeth Gaskell wrote to Eliza Fox that she had ‘turned farmer’- a rather surprising remark for a novelist known for her writing on industrial life […]
Manchester Meeting – The Adopted Child in 19th Century Literature
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomThis talk explores representations of adopted children in fiction by Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Our guest speaker, Dr Karen Laird, is an adoptive mother and the author of The Art Of Adapting Victorian Literature, 1848-1920 (Routledge, 2019) Doors open at 1pm - tea/coffee available to purchase, and you are […]
Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell’s Visits to Capesthorne Hall
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomIn the late 1840s and early 1850s Elizabeth Gaskell paid a number of visits to her friend Caroline Davenport at Capesthorne Hall, near Congleton, Cheshire. Capesthorne is a red-brick Georgian mansion, remodelled in the 1830s by the architect Edward Blore. Gaskell’s letters dwell on the architectural features of the building, particularly its ‘old’ hall and […]
Manchester Meeting – Three Lady Writers and Love
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomJoin us for a look at how Austen, Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell approach romantic love. Mr Rochester, Mr Darcy and Mr Thornton will all be mentioned! Elizabeth Williams is a retired English lecturer, Gaskell Society member and former Chair of The Gaskell Society. She is an excellent speaker and we're delighted to welcome her […]
Manchester Meeting – The Great Miss Lydia Becker: Suffragist, Scientist and Trailblazer
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomTo mark International Women's Day we welcome Joanna Williams, who'll be talking to us about her new biography of Lydia Becker. Fifty years before women were enfranchised, a legal loophole allowed a thousand women to vote in the general election of 1868. This surprising event occurred due to the single-minded dedication of Lydia Becker, unofficial, […]
The Gaskell Society Annual General Meeting 2022
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomOur AGM takes place at Cross Street Chapel in Manchester, and also over Zoom. 10.00 Tea and Coffee 10.30 AGM 11.45 The Daphne Carrick Memorial Lecture Elizabeth Gaskell and the Gregs of Styal and Bollington by Anthony Burton Anthony Burton has a degree in English Literature and was a curator at the Victoria and Albert […]
Industrial Labour and Cultural Engagement in the Long Nineteenth Century
Friends' Meeting House Mount Street, ManchesterThis conference is designed to expand on the remit of the 'Piston, Pen & Press' project and to discuss and reflect upon a wider range of cultural activities engaged in by industrial workers – for example, as dramatists and theatre-goers, as musicians and composers, as artists and visitors to exhibitions and galleries – as well […]
Manchester Meeting – Mr Darwin & Mrs Gaskell
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomMr Darwin and Mrs Gaskell: a tale of two storytellersIn October, we welcome Gordon Chancellor, who will examine the many connections between Charles Darwin and Elizabeth Gaskell, both in their family lives and in their work as great Victorian storytellers. They were distantly related via the Wedgwoods and Hollands and they both had daughters whose […]
Manchester Meeting – “I do like Mr Lushington very much”
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomWe're delighted to welcome David Taylor FSA to our November meeting. The Home Quartet (Mrs Lushington and her Daughters) by Arthur HughesVernon Lushington was a close friend of Elizabeth Gaskell and visited her often in Manchester, being a welcome guest at her house in Plymouth Grove. He was a lawyer, civil servant, philanthropist and Christian […]
Manchester Meeting – The Restoration of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomWe're especially delighted to welcome our dear friend, Frank Galvin, for our December illustrated talk. Frank is a retired museum curator who worked for Stockport’s Heritage Service for 32 years: he was responsible for Stockport’s eight heritage sites and managed a team of curators, designers and technicians. His projects included the Hat Works, The Stockport […]
Manchester Meeting – Rooms with a View
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomRooms with a View: Soft Furnishings in North and South This talk will explore what the furniture in North and South tells us about the social world Gaskell inhabits. Dr Clara Dawson reflects on whether furniture provides us with an alternative narrative to the romance plot and the depiction of north and south, and […]
Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell’s Visit to Chatsworth
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom‘I feel more like Cinderella, than anyone else you can imagine’: Elizabeth Gaskell’s visit to Chatsworth On Saturday 12 September 1857, Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughter Meta were amongst many tourists arriving at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire with their printed admission tickets. Their tour of the house was interrupted by an invitation to stay for […]
The Gaskell Society Annual General Meeting 2023
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomOur Annual General Meeting takes place at Cross Street Chapel in Manchester 10.00 Tea and Coffee 10.30 Annual General Meeting 11.45 The Daphne Carrick Memorial Lecture Why Read Elizabeth Gaskell? by Elizabeth Williams Elizabeth will highlight some of her very favourite passages from Gaskell’s work and discuss how relevant she still seems to be today. […]
Manchester Meeting – Domestic Mental Cruelty in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Works
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomKathleen Gentle's talk for our October meeting will focus on familial/spousal abuse in Gaskell's works. She'll discuss Gaskell's depiction of physical and mental cruelty and how she criticises her contemporary culture for their complicity in the abuse of women in spousal relationships. Kathleen completed her undergraduate and MA degrees in English Literature at the University […]
Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell in the Train and on the Omnibus
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomWe're delighted to welcome back committee member and one of our favourite speakers, Anthony Burton. He'll be offering a tempting taster for our 2024 Conference, which explores the theme of travel. Anthony was intrigued by paintings featuring railway stations and omnibuses in the Dining Room at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. He has explored the background of […]
Manchester Meeting – Gaskell and the Fairy Tale
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomElizabeth Gaskell’s interest in the fairy tale and her use of fairy-tale motifs throughout her writing have been curiously neglected by scholars. The fairy tale, like the Gothic and the ghostly, operates in a world of magic realism, its conventions straddling two worlds in which the supernatural is accepted as normal in an apparently realistic […]
The Victorian House: Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in Context
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomIs Elizabeth Gaskell's House a 'typical' Victorian house? Surely houses changed a lot over Victoria's 63-year-long reign? Anthony Burton examines various aspects of Victorian domestic architecture, in order to show how Elizabeth Gaskell's House fits in. Doors open at 1pm and the talk begins at 1.30pm. We'll make a recording available for online viewing after the […]
Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell in the Digital World
Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United KingdomWe're thrilled to welcome Jessica Smith, Creative Arts Archivist at the John Ryland Research Institute and Library. As you may know, the John Rylands Library holds a collection of Elizabeth Gaskell's printed works and letters. They hold the original manuscripts for 'The Grey Woman', Wives and Daughters, The Life of Charlotte Brontë and 'The Crooked […]