Mary Barton

“Gaskell’s shocking, moving and contemporary account of the corrosive effects of injustice and poverty.”
–Sunday Telegraph
Elizabeth Gaskell was born on 29 September 1810 in London. She was brought up in Knutsford, Cheshire by her aunt after her mother died when she was two years old. In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister like her father. After their marriage they lived in Manchester with their children. Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 to great success. She went on to publish much of her work in Charles Dickens's magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round. Along with short stories and a biography of Charlotte Bronte, she published five more novels including North and South (1855) and Wives and Daughters (1866). Wives and Daughters is unfinished as Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, also known as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English author, historian, and short story writer who lived from 29 September 1810 to 12 November 1865. The very poor and other members of Victorian society are all depicted in great detail in her novels. Both readers of literature and social historians will find her work interesting. In 1848, Mary Barton, her debut book, was released. The earliest biography of Charlotte Bront was Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bront, which was released in 1857. She only covered the moral, sophisticated portions of Bronte's life in her biography; the rest was left out because, in her opinion, some of the obscenity details should be kept out of public view. The BBC has adapted each of Gaskell's most well-known novels for television, including Cranford, North and South (1854-55), and Wives and Daughters (1865). Gaskell wrote to Charles Dickens at the beginning of 1850 seeking his guidance on how to help a girl named Pasley whom she had visited in prison. Ruth's title character had a model thanks to Pasley in 1853. Her remaining books, Cranford (1853), North and South (1854), and Wives and Daughters (1855), are the most well-known (1865). She gained notoriety for her writing, particularly for her ghost stories.