– Letter (412) to George Smith, February 1859 –
Only four pieces of Gaskell’s writing were published in May: the last two episodes of Cranford, an obscure piece entitled ‘Company Manners’ (1854) and the short story, “Six Weeks at Heppenheim”.
At the Gaskell Society’s 2019 Conference, Dr Diane Duffy and Anthony Burton stood in at short notice to give a talk on “How did Elizabeth Gaskell know what she knew
While reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Ruth in connection with another project, I came across some passages that seemed uncannily apt to our own situation – the Great Fever of 2020. As
Our very good friend, Dr Michael Sanders, Senior Lecturer in C19th Writing at the University of Manchester, is running a virtual reading group via Zoom during the COVID-19 lockdown period.
Cranford is presented as an isolated community rooted in the past and inwardly focused on the minutiae of domestic routine and etiquette, yet the town has a railway; a dynamic
For April’s ‘This Month in Writing’ I have chosen to discuss Cranford as two episodes of the story were published in Household Words in April 1852 and April 1853. These
While we are all locked down, attempting to survive the ever-increasing threat of ‘The Virus’, I thought it might be interesting to share with you an incident in the early
Published in 1863, ‘A Dark Night’s Work’ was first serialised in Dickens’ periodical All The Year Round between January and March 1862. Despite its title, it is predominantly a psychological exploration
‘Mr. Harrison’s Confession’ was serialised in the Ladies Companion and Monthly Magazine between February and April 1851. The title is intriguing because it suggests any number of possible misdemeanours that