Elizabeth Gaskell's Works
"It is hard work writing a novel all morning, spudding up dandelions all afternoon, & writing again at night. "
– Letter (465) to Marianne Gaskell, May 1860 –
Thank you to Professor Mitsuhara Matsuoka, of Nagoya University and the Japanese branch of the Gaskell Society for compiling these lists. The information in brackets refers to when and where a particular work first appeared.
As was the norm in Victorian England, Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels were first serialised – and her short stories published in – the hugely popular periodicals of the day. These included Household Words and All the Year Round, both founded and owned by Charles Dickens, and The Cornhill Magazine, edited by William Makepeace Thackeray.
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Longer works
Mary Barton (1848)
The Moorland Cottage (1850)
Ruth (1853)
Cranford (1853)
North and South (Household Words, x, 1855)
The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)
My Lady Ludlow (Household Words, xviii, 1858)
Sylvia’s Lovers (1863)
A Dark Night’s Work (All the Year Round, viii-ix, 1863)
Cousin Phillis (Cornhill Magazine, viii, 1864)
Wives and Daughters (Cornhill Magazine, x, 1866)
Short stories
“On Visiting the Grave of my Stillborn Little Girl”(July 4th, 1837)
“Sketches among the Poor, No. I” [with William Gaskell] (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, xli, 1837)
“Clopton Hall” [in William Howitt’s Visits to Remarkable Places] (1840)
“Life in Manchester: Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras” (Howitt’s Journal, i, 1847)
“The Sexton’s Hero” (Howitt’s Journal, ii, 1847)
“Our Manchester Correspondent; Emerson’s Lectures” (Howitt’s Journal, ii, 1847) [dubious attribution]
“Letter of Enquiry” (Howitt’s Journal, ii, 1847) [dubious attribution]
“Christmas Storms and Sunshine” (Howitt’s Journal, iii, 1848)
“Hand and Heart” (Sunday School Penny Magazine, ii, 1849)
“The Last Generation in England” (Sartain’s Union Magazine, 1849) [later expanded as Cranford]
“Martha Preston” (Sartain’s Union Magazine, vi, 1850) [rewritten as“Half a Lifetime Ago”]
“Lizzie Leigh” (Household Words, i, 1849)
“The Well of Pen Morfa” (Household Words, ii, 1850)
“The Heart of John Middleton” (Household Words, ii, 1850)
“Mr Harrison’s Confessions” (The Ladies’ Companion, iii, 1851)
“Disappearances” (Household Words, iii, 1851)
“The Deserted Mansion” (Fraser’s Magazine, xliv, 1851)
“Our Society at Cranford” (1851) [Cranford, I-II]
“A Love Affair at Cranford” (1852) [Cranford, III-IV]
“Bessy’s Troubles at Home” (Sunday School Penny Magazine, n.s.ii, 1852)
“Memory at Cranford” (1852) [Cranford, V-VI]
“Visiting at Cranford” (1852) [Cranford, VII-VIII]
“The Shah’s English Gardener” (Household Words, v, 1852)
“The Old Nurse’s Story” (Household Words, Xmas 1852 in “Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire”)
“Cumberland Sheep Shearers” (Household Words, vi, 1853)
“The Great Cranford Panic” (1853) [Cranford, IX-XI]
“Stopped Payment at Cranford” (1853) [Cranford, XII-XIII]
“Friends in Need” (1853) [Cranford, XIV]
“A Happy Return to Cranford” (1853) [Cranford, XV-XVI]
“Bran” (Household Words, viii, 1853)
“Morton Hall” (Household Words, viii, 1853)
“Traits and Stories of the Huguenots”(Household Words, viii, 1853)
“My French Master” (Household Words, viii, 1853)
“The Squire’s Story” (Household Words, Xmas 1853 in “Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire”)
“The Scholar’s Story” (Household Words, Xmas Extra Number, 1853)
“Uncle Peter” (Fraser’s Magazine, 48, 1853)
“Modern Greek Songs” (Household Words, ix, 1854)
“Company Manners” (Household Words, ix, 1854)
“An Accursed Race” (Household Words, xii, 1855)
“Half a Lifetime Ago” (Household Words, xii, 1855) [reworked version of “Martha Preston”]
“The Poor Clare” (Household Words, xiv, 1856)
“The Siege of the Black Cottage” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, xiv, 1857) [uncertain attribution]
“The Doom of the Griffiths” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, xvi, 1858)
“An Incident at Niagara Falls” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, xvii, 1858) [almost certainly Gaskell’s; an interpolated episode in Cummins’s Mabel Vaughan]
“The Sin of a Father” (Household Words, xviii, 1858) [republished as“Right at Last”]
“Right at Last”(1858)
“The Manchester Marriage” (Household Words, Xmas 1858 in “A House to Let”)
“The Half-Brothers” (Dublin University Magazine, Nov., 1859)
“Lois the Witch” (All the Year Round, i, 1859)
“The Ghost in the Garden Room” (All the Year Round, Xmas 1859 in “The Haunted House”) [republished as“The Crooked Branch”]
“Curious if True” (Cornhill Magazine, v, 1860)
“The Grey Woman” (All the Year Round, iv, 1861)
“Six Weeks at Heppenheim” (Cornhill Magazine, v, 1862)
“Shams” (Fraser’s Magazine, lxvii, 1863)
“An Italian Institution” (All the Year Round, iv, 1863)
“The Cage at Cranford” (All the Year Round, x, 1863)
“How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle” (All the Year Round, Xmas 1863 in “Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings”) [republished as “Crowley Castle”]
“French Life” (Fraser’s Magazine, lxix, 1864)
“Some Passages from the History of the Chomley Family” (Fraser’s Magazine, 72, 1864)
“Review of Torrens, W. T. M., Lancashire’s Lesson” (The Reader, v, 1865) [uncertain attribution]
“A Column of Gossip from Paris” (Pall Mall Gazette, 25 March 1865) [This and two following items identified by Sharps.]
“A Column of Gossip from Paris” (Pall Mall Gazette, 28 March 1865)
“A Letter of Gossip from Paris” (Pall Mall Gazette, 25 April 1865)
“A Parson’s Holiday” (Pall Mall Gazette, ii, 1865)
“Two Fragments of Ghost Stories”(n.d.)