'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year…' A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is the best known and most loved of all Christmas novels with its tale of Scrooge’s seasonal redemption through Christmas Past, Present and Future. But as we step into Christmas, the Gaskell Society's Anthony […]
A new season of Mary Barton events begins at Elizabeth Gaskell's House with this introduction to her first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life. The story is a tale […]
Back by popular demand, Dr Diane Duffy leads us on a literary journey of discovery to the places, buildings and landmarks of Manchester as featured in Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel […]
Carolyn Lambert is the Gaskell Society’s Letters Recorder, responsible for hunting down and investigating new Gaskell letters. Her talk will cover academic theories of letter-writing; letters in Gaskell’s fiction and […]
Rooms 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. […]
In this lively online event we take a closer look at two of literature’s best loved heroes – Mr Thornton from Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and Mr Darcy from […]
Elizabeth Gaskell had a love of fashion, enjoying foreign styles on her travels, and a fan of beautiful shawls and patterns at home. This talk, by Margo Singer, looks at […]
‘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 […]
Join Dr Diane Duffy for a special look at 19th century women writers’ experiences, starting with Elizabeth Gaskell and reflecting on the lives of giants of literature including Jane Austen, […]
A celebration of Mary Barton and the greatest 19th century literary heroines by women writers from Jane Austen to the Brontës. Writers like Elizabeth Gaskell question our views of Victorian […]
A talk by Kathleen Gentle Kathleen Gentle, a postgraduate researcher at Anglia Ruskin University, examines the depiction of psychological abuse in familial and spousal relationships and focusing on Sylvia’s Lovers […]
Elizabeth Gaskell had great hopes for the garden at Plymouth Grove, not just as a beautiful place to relax, but as a source of food for the family. She even […]
Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South continues to be beloved by fans around the world. Many who admire the novel or the BBC series, have been inspired to contribute their own […]
Our passion for North and South continues as we take a closer look at lead character Margaret Hale. Our heroine is famous for her growing love affair with mill-owner John […]
Bob’s book of this title appeared in August 2020 and highlights connections between Unitarian communities across England by following the life and times of Elizabeth Gaskell's dear friend, Janetta Bishop […]
‘Revenge may be wicked, but it’s perfectly natural.’ Becky Sharpe, Vanity Fair, 1847 The stereotype of the Victorian woman is that of a domestic angel, pure, innocent and a helpmate […]
Mary Barton and the Year of Revolutions: ‘John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist’ Elizabeth Gaskell’s debut novel Mary Barton (1848) is recognised as one of the most important Victorian works to explore […]
Kathleen 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 […]
With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch! Thomas Hood wrote the famous poem The […]
Ann Radcliffe and the Female Gothic – ‘A genius of no common stamp’ Get ready for a spooky night of literature as we celebrate the bicentenary of Ann Radcliffe, the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]