Events

A talk by Dr Emma Probett. At first glance the fictional lives of Gaskell’s Sylvia Robson and Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse are almost complete opposites. Emma is described as “handsome, clever and rich” and as such she is always at the heart of Highbury society: Sylvia, though beautiful, comes from...

This year’s Joan Leach Memorial Lecture is given by the writer and Intellectual Property expert Helen Shay. Writers and publishers often had fraught relationships, particularly women writers. This talk looks at how Gaskell’s relationship with her publishers and editors, in particular Charles Dickens, impacted on her writing, moulding her increasing...

Every year, on a Sunday close to what would have been Elizabeth Gaskell's birthday, we lay flowers on her grave (10.45am) at Brook Street Chapel in Knutsford. We also lay flowers on the nearby grave of the Gaskell Society's founder, the much-missed Joan Leach. We then go into the chapel...

A celebration for book lovers! The Fair is a free day celebrating books, authors, readers and literary societies. Visitors will be able to browse stalls, meet society members and discover the remarkable range of writers, genres and literary interests represented by societies from across the country. Throughout the day, short...

Manchester Meeting – ‘A Little Paradise’: the Urban and Rural Homes of a Manchester Manufacturer 6 October , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm What was life like for a wealthy family in the Georgian period? Samuel and Hannah Greg were amongst the Manchester elite at the time, but when they...

« All Events Sensation Fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret Tuesday 27 October, 2026 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm GMT £5 – £6 Dr Diane Duffy continues her popular study sessions, turning her attention to Sensation Fiction and in particular, Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These friendly monthly...

Sustainability has become almost a popular term in recent years. It can have many meanings, not just those relating to the environment and it provides an interesting lens through which to refract and reflect upon the life of Mrs Gaskell and her works. Thus, for example, in Wives and Daughters,...

A talk by Dr Katie McGettigan, Royal Holloway, University of London In July 1860, the American novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a transatlantic best-seller, wrote to Elizabeth Gaskell with a proposition. Their shared London publisher, Sampson Low, had intimated to Stowe that Gaskell “seemed favourably inclined...

« All Events Sensation Fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret Tuesday 24 November, 2026 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm GMT £5 – £6 Dr Diane Duffy continues her popular study sessions, turning her attention to Sensation Fiction and in particular, Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These friendly monthly...

“The peculiar, and in some respects distressing, condition in which we are now placed as a manufacturing people”: George Buckland, Elizabeth Gaskell, and the Reports of the Unitarian Ministry to the Poor The Unitarian Reports of the Ministry to the Poor confronted readers, in harrowing detail, with the grim reality...

« All Events Sensation Fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret Tuesday 26 January, 2027 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm GMT £5 – £6 Dr Diane Duffy continues her popular study sessions, turning her attention to Sensation Fiction and in particular, Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These friendly monthly...

Based on 10 years of meticulous research, this talk takes a deep dive into the Gaskell/Bronte story unearthing some surprising details about literature's most famous female friendship. Susan Dunne is the author of Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell: their lives, friendship and writing (Pen and Sword 2026). Everyone is most...

A talk by Dr Sara Zadrozny, University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education The census of 1851, the year in which “Our Society at Cranford” first appeared in Household Words, provoked concerns in society about the rising numbers of “old maids”: unmarried middle-class women who were unlikely to find husbands....

« All Events Sensation Fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret Tuesday 23 February, 2027 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm GMT £5 – £6 Dr Diane Duffy continues her popular study sessions, turning her attention to Sensation Fiction and in particular, Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These friendly monthly...

« All Events Who was Marie Nordlinger, Marcel Proust’s ‘Muse from Manchester’? Tuesday 2 March, 2027 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm GMT £5 – £6 Dr Cynthia Gamble introduces us to Marie Nordlinger (1876-1961), the talented, polyglot artist and sculptor from Manchester who was in regular correspondence with Marcel...

« All Events Sensation Fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret Tuesday 30 March, 2027 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm BST £5 – £6 Dr Diane Duffy continues her popular study sessions, turning her attention to Sensation Fiction and in particular, Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These friendly monthly...

« All Events Sensation Fiction – Lady Audley’s Secret Tuesday 27 April, 2027 , 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm BST £5 – £6 Dr Diane Duffy continues her popular study sessions, turning her attention to Sensation Fiction and in particular, Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. These friendly monthly...