The Gaskell Society

Celebrating the life and work of Elizabeth Gaskell

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Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell in the Train and on the Omnibus

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

We'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 […]

£5 – £6

How Manchester Made Shakespeare Modern – Rosa Grindon, the Suffragist Shakespearean Scholar

Manchester Central Library St Peter's Square, Manchester

Dr Ian Nickson (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham) and Dr. Monika Smialkowska (Northumbria University) will talk about the largely overlooked career of Rosa Grindon. They will chart her journey from modest beginnings in a Derbyshire village to becoming a leading figure in literary and theatrical circles in Manchester, a ground-breaking Shakespearean scholar and, as a […]

Free

Can we Devise a Gaskell Brand? – with Anthony Burton

Francis Holland School 39 Graham Terrace, London, United Kingdom

As anyone who has attended Gaskell Society conferences, or joined any of the Gaskell House’s online events, will know, Anthony has a vast and wide-ranging amount of knowledge about Elizabeth Gaskell, her life, times and contemporaries. He will use Gaskell, Dickens, Austen and the Brontës to look at how writers have been promoted (or promoted […]

Online Event: North and South – The Preston Lockouts Anniversary

online

2023 marks the 170th anniversary of the Preston Lockouts – the historical strikes that informed the plot and themes of Elizabeth Gaskell’s classic romantic novel North and South and provided inspiration for Charles Dickens in Hard Times. When workers demanded a 10% wage increase in Preston in 1853, the factory owners simply locked the gates and left 18,000 people […]

£5

Manchester Meeting – Gaskell and the Fairy Tale

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

Elizabeth 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 […]

£5 – £6

Online Talk: Victorian Christmas in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester

online

At the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, Christmas meant little to commercial Manchester but during the 1840s-1860s the city came to share in an upsurge of enthusiasm for the festive season. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester saw a boom in the Christmas trade in food, wine and gifts, the expansion of seasonal entertainments like pantomime and the […]

£5

The Victorian House: Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in Context

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

Is 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 […]

£5 – £6

Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell in the Digital World

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

We'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 […]

£5 – £6

Exploring the Brontë Sisters in the Vicarage

The Vicarage Parkgate Road, Chester, United Kingdom

Our friend, Professor Deborah Wynne, is hosting a study day at the University of Chester, focusing on the work of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. There will be a reading group discussion as part of the event 10:00am: Arrival and welcome 10:15am: Alison Newbold on the work of Emily Brontë 10:35am: Professor Melissa Fegan on […]

Free

Cynthia V Molly: ‘Love me as I am, sweet one, for I shall never be better.’

online

Molly is the moral heart of classic novel Wives and Daughters but it is her flawed step-sister Cynthia who may appeal to readers more. The two girls are a study in comparisons. Molly is concerned with goodness while Cynthia’s relationship with her ghastly mother Mrs Gibson echoes that of Lizzy and Mrs Bennet in Jane […]

£5

Villette V Ruth: Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell

online

Charlotte Brontë is a giant of Victorian literature and the much-loved author of the classic Jane Eyre, but what of her last novel to be published during her lifetime, Villette, about the passion and pain of unrequited love? Brontë’s semi-autobiographical book Villette tells the story of Lucy Snowe as she flees England for a Belgian […]

£6

As Seen on Screen – Costume in TV Adaptations

online

Join Curator Elinor Camille-Wood as she takes you on a riotous journey through the fabulously outrageous fashions of the 1830s, the time Elizabeth Gaskell set her novel, Wives and Daughters. Discover what the characters would have worn from large sleeves to intricate hairstyles in a period of flamboyant ladies and fashionable gentleman. The talk will […]

£5

Charles Darwin – Literary Science in Wives and Daughters

online

Elizabeth Gaskell’s final novel Wives and Daughters explores the Victorian interest in science and logic through the character of Roger Hamley and the gentleman scientist Lord Hollingford. Roger was heavily based on the famous evolutionary scientist, and author of The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin. Wives and Daughters was Darwin’s favourite novel and he […]

£5

Online Talk: Wives and Daughters vs Mansfield Park – The Domestic Novel

online

Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell are two of the nation’s best-loved authors. Rightly lauded for their classic works, they are often depicted as writing about marriage and the narrow social confines of women’s lives. Now, we look at them afresh as we explore the ‘domestic novel’ of the 19th century. Many Georgian and Victorian stories […]

£5

Manchester Meeting – Edmund Potter: MP, FRS, Calico Printer and Philanthropist

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

Edmund Potter is probably most famous for being the grandfather of the author, Beatrix Potter, but he had an illustrious career of his own. Edmund was a Calico Printer who owned a calico print works at Dinting Vale, near Glossop, Derbyshire, that was once the largest calico printing factory in the world. Kate Raine will […]

£5 – £6

Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot – Wives and Daughters V Middlemarch

online

Two giants of Victorian literature, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot were very different in almost every way. George Eliot was private and intellectual while Elizabeth was outgoing, gossipy and deeply shocked by the scandal of her fellow writer’s personal life. So how did these differences affect their work? How did they approach similar themes such […]

£5

RECORDING – Moss and Mosses in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Worlds

online

RECORDING: Moss and Mosses in Elizabeth Gaskell's Worlds This year's Joan Leach Memorial Lecture was given by Dr Ingrid Hanson. You can now watch a recording of the talk for a limited time. In Mary Barton, Margaret’s grandfather Job Legh has been out ‘moss-hunting’, Margaret tells Mary, and the elderly Alice, reminiscing about her countryside […]

£5 – £6

RECORDING – Edmund Potter: MP, FRS, Calico Printer and Philanthropist

online

Edmund Potter is probably most famous for being the grandfather of the author, Beatrix Potter, but he had an illustrious career of his own. Edmund was a Calico Printer who owned a calico print works at Dinting Vale, near Glossop, Derbyshire, that was once the largest calico printing factory in the world. Kate Raine will […]

£5 – £6

Online talk: Unmarried Women: A Life of Freedom?

online

Elizabeth Gaskell’s last novel, Wives and Daughters, explored the position of women in 19th century society and the pressure on them to marry. Her book had much to say about marriage, including storylines like Mrs Gibson’s marriage of necessity, Cynthia’s secret engagement and Molly’s hoped-for love-match. Now we compare fiction with reality in this special […]

£5

Online talk: Halloween – Brides of Dracula

online

A talk to mark the bi-centary year of Lord Byron. Step into the dark side to look at literary vampires, starting with his unfinished novel The Burial: A Fragment. Byron’s supernatural story may have been the first in English to feature a vampire but it certainly was not the last and many that followed featured […]

£6

Manchester Meeting – Female Role Models from Biblical Heroines

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

Author Sherry Ashworth looks at how Elizabeth Gaskell,  George Eliot and Charles Dickens used biblical heroines to develop their own characters. Our Manchester meetings take place in Cross Street Chapel on the first Tuesday of the month, October-March (exc January). Everyone is most welcome to come along, members and non-members alike. Doors open at 1pm […]

£5 – £6

Elizabeth Gaskell, the Portico Library and Jane Austen

Francis Holland School 39 Graham Terrace, London, United Kingdom

The Gaskells’ relationship with the Portico Library is well-documented. A bust of William Gaskell sits in the Library, honouring his tenure as the Chairman - the longest running Chairman in the Library’s history. A handful of articles have explored William and Elizabeth’s relationship to the library, but in this early stage, we have only just […]

£6

Manchester in Victorian Literature

online

Manchester is the dramatic backdrop to literary classics, such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and lesser-known works, such as Isabella Banks’s The Manchester Man. The city has been at the forefront of industrial change and political radicalism but what about literature? How have events from the Industrial Revolution to Peterloo inspired writers? How are the lives of […]

£6

RECORDING ACCESS – Elizabeth Gaskell, Letters and an Accidental Abortion at St Bartholomew’s Hospital

online

Available until 30 November 2024. Hannah Palmer, a PhD student at Loughborough University, talks about her research into abortion and maternal histories in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Her thesis explores these issues in Gaskell’s letters and comments more generally on Gaskell’s role within her community. This is a recording of a talk Hannah gave to […]

£5 – £6

Manchester Meeting – Elizabeth Gaskell, Celebrity

Cross Street Chapel Cross Street,, Manchester, United Kingdom

Elizabeth Gaskell, Celebrity: How she coped with fame In ordinary life, Elizabeth Gaskell enjoyed a certain status in Manchester as the wife of a prominent clergyman. But she soon achieved fame in her own right, through her writings.  This talk, by Anthony Burton, explains how these appeared at first anonymously, then under the names ‘E. […]

£5 – £6