Abandoned by Her Father.Three Children Dead in Infancy. And an Intriguing Affair with an American Toyboy ... The Amazing Secret Life of Cranford Creator Elizabeth Gaskell

Summary

---

ON THE surface, she was the ideal Victorian wife and mother, a 19th-century domestic goddess. The clue was in the name she used on her books not Elizabeth Gaskell but Mrs Gaskell. It distinguished her from other women writers of the time, such as Jane Austen and George Eliot, who were spinsters and childless.

And it was true. Married to a minister, bringing up four children, keeping hearth and home, engaging herself in charity, the author of Cranford embodied old-fashioned femininity.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Abandoned by Her Father.Three Children Dead in Infancy. And an Intriguing Affair with an American Toyboy ... The Amazing Secret Life of Cranford Creator Elizabeth Gaskell

From the comfort of that married bliss, she ran a canny eye over the outside world, its quirks and its characters, especially those souls who, unlike her, were without men. She created the town of Cranford based on Knutsford in Cheshire where she spent the most formative years of her childhood and often returned to as an adult.

Now it has been lovingly and scintillatingly brought to life in a BBC1 TV drama, with Dame Judi Dench and Dame Eileen Atkins, on Sunday nights. All the Cranford women are single, and their gossip, their snobberies, their foibles an...

See the full content of this document

---