Although the Industrial Revolution thrummed in the background of her childhood, it was William’s Manchester congregation that first put Gaskell in touch with the grim realities of factory work. Cotton mills dominated the labor force in the city, and filthy shanty towns housed thousands of exploited, undernourished mill workers. William and Elizabeth were kept busy by their congregation and by their efforts to address the social problems that plagued the booming industrial city of Manchester. Although she had written only personal diaries, and was also busy raising her own family in the early years of her marriage, Gaskell’s community work inspired her to collaborate with her husband on the narrative poem “Sketches Among the Poor, No. 1,” which was published in 1837.
Gaskell’s happy, busy life was interrupted by tragedy in 1845 when her infant son died of scarlet fever while on a family vacation. Overcome by grief, Gaskell followed her husband’s advice and became absorbed in her writing. The result was her first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of a Manchester Life (1848), which earned her instant success—and hostile criticism from the cotton mill owners whom she so unsparingly portrayed. Gaskell went on to write six other novels: Cranford (1853), Ruth (1853), North and South (1855), Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), Cousin Phyllis (1864), and Wives and Daughters (1866). She also wrote numerous short stories, as well as a famous biography of her friend, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). Much of Gaskell’s short fiction appeared in popular literary journals, and several of her novels were serialized in those publications. Gaskell’s works were popular during her lifetime and received critical acclaim as well. Friendships with literary giants of the day—including Charles Dickens, who also published her work in his journals—aided her career, and frequent travels throughout Europe gave her material for her writing and eased the strains of an extremely busy life. Gaskell had six children, four of whom, all daughters, lived to be adults.
In 1865 Gaskell bought a country house in Hampshire as a surprise for her husband’s retirement. By then her last novel, Wives and Daughters, was being serialized in the Cornhill Magazine. Physically exhausted, and yet to complete the final installment of her novel, Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly on a visit to the house on November 12, 1865. Although never completed, Wives and Daughters is considered by many to be a study in character on a par with the novels of George Eliot and Jane Austen. Elizabeth Gaskell was buried at Brook Street Chapel in Knutsford.
THE WORLD OF ELIZABETH GASKELL AND THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË
1800 The Napoleonic Wars begin. 1810 Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson is born on September 29 in London to Unitarian parents. She is her parents’ eighth and last child. 1811 Elizabeth’s mother dies, and she is taken in by her mother’s sister, Hannah Holland Lumb, in the town of Knutsford in Cheshire. Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is published.1812 Charles Dickens, future publisher and friend of Elizabeth Gaskell, is born. 1814 Elizabeth’s father remarries. Elizabeth remains in Knutsford with her aunt. 1815 Anthony Trollope is born. The Napoleonic Wars end with the Battle of Waterloo. 1816 Charlotte Brontë is born on April 21 in Thornton, England, the third of six children of the Reverend Patrick and Maria Branwell Brontë. 1817 Patrick Branwell Brontë is born. 1818 Emily Brontë is born. 1819 Novelist George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) is born. John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is published. Victoria, the future queen, is born. 1820 Anne Brontë is born, and the Brontë family moves to Haworth, where Reverend Brontë has been offered a lifetime curacy. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is published.1821 Charlotte’s mother, Maria, dies, and her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moves into the Brontë household to help raise the six young children. 1822 Elizabeth Gaskell enters the liberal-minded Avonbank School at Stratford-on-Avon, where she spends the next five years absorbed in her studies. She receives an excellent education, unlike many girls of her generation. 1825 Maria and Elizabeth Brontë contract what is probably tuberculosis and die. Charlotte and Emily are pulled out of school to return home to Haworth. 1826 The four surviving Brontë siblings create the “Young Men” plays, the first of their imaginative fictional writings, which are followed in 1827 by “Our Fellows” and “The Islanders.” 1828 Tragedy grips the Stevenson family when John disappears on a trip with the East India Company to India. Elizabeth travels to London to nurse her father, whose health is deteriorating. 1829 William Stevenson dies, and Elizabeth lives with a distant relative, Unitarian minister William Turner. She is exposed to a socially progressive and intellectual way of life that will inform her fictional works. 1830 Modern rail travel begins in England. 1831 On a trip to Manchester, Elizabeth meets her future husband, William Gaskell, an assistant minister at an important Unitarian center, the Cross Street Chapel. 1832 Elizabeth and William Gaskell marry in Knutsford. After their honeymoon in Wales, they reside in Manchester. The First Reform Act redistributes parliamentary seats and extends voting rights for the middle classes. 1833 Gaskell suffers the stillborn birth of her first child. Slavery is abolished in the British Empire. 1834 A daughter, Marianne, is born to Gaskell. 1835 Charlotte Brontë teaches at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head. 1836 Gaskell writes the poem “On Visiting the Grave of My Stillborn Little Girl, Sunday July 4th , 1836.”1837 The narrative poem “Sketches Among the Poor, No. 1,” which Gaskell wrote with her husband, is published by Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. A daughter, Margaret Emily, known as Meta, is born. Charlotte Brontë writes to Robert Southey, the British poet laureate, to ask his opinion of her poetry. His disheartening response implies that while Charlotte displays what Wordsworth calls “faculty of verse,” this is nothing extraordinary in a time of so many successful poets. He goes on to declare that women have no place in the business of literature. Queen Victoria assumes the throne of England.1838 Charlotte resigns from her teaching position at Miss Wooler’s school. Dickens’s Oliver Twist is published.1839 Charlotte works for the next three years as a governess, first in Lothersdale and later in Rawdon. 1840 “Clopton Hall,” a short essay recalling a visit to Clopton House during Gaskell’s school days, is included in William Howitt’s Visits to Remarkable Places. Thomas Hardy is born.1842 A daughter, Florence, is born to Gaskell. Charlotte and Emily Brontë travel to Brussels to study at Pensionnat Heger, where they read, among other things, works by French and German Romantics. They stay less than a year, returning to Haworth because their aunt Elizabeth Branwell has died. 1843- 1844 Charlotte spends a second year at the Pensionnat in Brussels honing her French and German language skills. She develops a strong emotional attachment to her married employer and former teacher, Constantin Heger. Charlotte returns to Haworth in January 1844. A son, William, is born to Gaskell in 1844.