Letters of Mrs Gaskell's Daughters

Contents

The letters of the four Gaskell daughters open a door into the social and cultural lives of a well-connected middle-class Victorian family. Events that impinged on the lives and the letters of these women include the Indian Mutiny, the assassination of Lincoln, the Franco-Prussian War, the Boer Wars and Fenian agitation. They witnessed the effects in England of the American Civil War, and engaged in the religious controversies of the day. They take a close interest in the impact of Darwin's discoveries, discuss the latest news, Ruskin's lectures on Venice, the Pre-Raphaelites, and what it is like to play Beethoven's piano pieces under Sir Charles Halle's tuition. They also shed light on the network of Unitarian friends and scholars who undertook the stewardship of Elizabeth Gaskell's writing. This richly annotated edition will appeal to anyone interested in Transatlantic relations, in Mrs Gaskell, in women's networking, in Victorian ideas and social life, and in the intellectual culture of dissenting circles.

author

Irene Wiltshire took a BA at Manchester Metropolitan and an MA at Salford University where her PhD Dissertation (2002) was on Elizabeth Gaskell’s Romantic inheritance. Her research has been presented in scholarly journals, at the Wordsworth Summer Conference and at conferences of the British Association of Victorian Studies. She contributed to the Gaskell bicentenary volume, Elizabeth Gaskell, Victorian Culture and the Art of Fiction (2010) edited by Sandro Jung.