Gaskell, Mrs Elizabeth Cleghorn, n�e Stevenson 1810-65
English novelist

She was born in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London. Her father was successively a teacher, preacher, farmer, boarding-house keeper, writer and keeper of the records to the Treasury, and she was brought up by an aunt in Knutsford - the Cranford of her stories. In 1832 she married William Gaskell (1805-84), a Unitarian minister in Manchester. There she studied working men and women, and made important contributions to what came to be known as the 'Condition of England' novel. Mary Barton was published anonymously in 1848, followed by The Moorland Cottage (1850), Cranford (1853), Ruth (1853), North and South (1855), Round the Sofa (1859), Right at Last (1860), Sylvia's Lovers (1863), Cousin Phillis (1865) and Wives and Daughters (1865). She also wrote The Life of Charlotte Bront� (1857).

Bibliography: M Allott, Elizabeth Gaskell (1960)