The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell

by Edited by Jill L. Matus

• ISBN13: 9780521609265
• ISBN10: 0521609267
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In the last few decades Elizabeth Gaskell has become a figure of growing importance in the field of Victorian literary studies. She produced work of great variety and scope in the course of a highly successful writing career that lasted for about twenty years from the mid-1840s to her unexpected death in 1865. The essays in this Companion draw on recent advances in biographical and bibliographical studies of Gaskell and cover the range of her impressive and varied output as a writer of novels, biography, short stories, and letters. The volume, which features well-known scholars in the field of Gaskell studies, focuses throughout on her narrative versatility and her literary responses to the social, cultural, and intellectual transformations of her time. This Companion will be invaluable for students and scholars of Victorian literature, and includes a chronology and guide to further reading.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. x
Chronology	p. xi
List of abbreviations	p. xxi
Introduction	p. 1
The life and letters of E. C. Gaskell	p. 10
Mary Barton and North and South	p. 27
Cranford and Ruth	p. 46
Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte	p. 59
Sylvia's Lovers and other historical fiction	p. 75
Cousin Phillis, Wives and Daughters, and modernity	p. 90
Elizabeth Gaskell's shorter pieces	p. 108
Gaskell, gender, and the family	p. 131
Elizabeth Gaskell and social transformation	p. 148
Unitarian dissent	p. 164
Gaskell then and now	p. 178
Guide to further reading	p. 192
Index	p. 198
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