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Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell\u2019s rise to be a public figure in Victorian<\/a> society \u2013 as one of its most popular novelists and short story writers, known as \u2018Mrs Gaskell\u2019 \u2013 was borne from an intensely personal time in her life. In 1845, she lost her infant son to scarlet fever and, at her husband\u2019s encouragement, turned to writing for nothing more than an outlet for her grief and a possible path out of depression. The result was her first novel, and an instant success: Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n About a desperate working-class family, it vividly portrayed the slums of Manchester and plight of the poor. \u201cI had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men,\u201d Gaskell said in the preface; a sympathy that had been nurtured throughout a childhood surrounded by progressive thinkers, reformers and humanitarians. Born Elizabeth Stevenson on 29 September 1810, she was raised, following her mother\u2019s death when she was only one, by her \u201cmore than mother\u201d aunt, Hannah Lumb, who made sure she received a good education and introduction to Unitarianism.<\/p>\n In 1832, Elizabeth married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister in Manchester. Far from the rural calm of her upbringing in Knutsford, Cheshire, her new home in the sprawling city, a centre of textiles, exposed her to the impact industrialisation and urbanisation was having on the poorest workers, and the resulting social tensions. By then, she had also suffered her share of personal tragedy: her father\u2019s death; brother John\u2019s disappearance at sea while with the Merchant Navy; and, in 1833, the loss of a stillborn daughter.<\/p>\n Gaskell eventually had four surviving daughters, Marianne, Margaret Emily (known as Meta), Florence and Julia, and most of her time was dedicated to being a loving mother and minister\u2019s wife. But she enjoyed writing too, and in 1837 a poem penned with William, titled \u2018Sketches Among the Poor\u2019, was printed in Blackwood\u2019s Magazine. A few years later, her piece on Clopton Hall for Visits to Remarkable Places<\/em> became her first solo publication.<\/p>\n Mary Barton<\/em> was published in 1848 \u2013 anonymously, as many female writers did if not using male pseudonyms, but her identity came out. With the novel a sensation for its stark and divisive depiction of worker struggles, radical activity and murder, Charles Dickens<\/a> was soon in touch inviting \u201cMrs Gaskell\u201d to contribute to his new weekly magazine, Household Words. He wrote: \u201cI do honestly know that there is no living English writer whose aid I would desire to enlist in preference to the authoress of Mary Barton<\/em> (a book that most profoundly affected and impressed me).\u201d<\/p>\nMarriage and children<\/h3>\n
Mary Barton<\/em><\/h3>\n