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 a very modest household, and […]
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 confidence in asserting her views […]
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 tired of urban life 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 sessions take place in Knutsford […]
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, the narrator says “In his […]
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 to entertain a project for […]
« 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 sessions take place in Knutsford […]
“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 of the living conditions of […]
« 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 sessions take place in Knutsford […]
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. Cranford challenges these concerns, and […]
« 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 sessions take place in Knutsford […]
« 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 Proust. Portrait of Marie Nordlinger […]
« 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 sessions take place in Knutsford […]
« 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 sessions take place in Knutsford […]