Elizabeth Gaskell - Married Life and Writing Career

Married Life and Writing Career

On 30 August 1832 Elizabeth married minister, William Gaskell in Knutsford. They spent their honeymoon in North Wales, staying with Elizabeth's uncle, Samuel Holland near Porthmadog. The Gaskells settled in Manchester, where William was the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. Manchester's industrial surroundings influenced Elizabeth's writing in the industrial genre. Their first child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1833. A son, William, (1844–45), died in infancy, and this tragedy was the catalyst for Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton. Their other children were Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily, known as Meta (1837), Florence Elizabeth (1842), and Julia Bradford (1846). Florence married Charles Crompton, a barrister and Liberal politician, in 1863.

In March 1835 Gaskell began a diary, documenting the development of her daughter Marianne, her views of herself and William as parents, the value she gave to her role as a mother, her religious faith, and later the relationship between Marianne and her sister, Meta. In 1836 with her husband, she co-authored the cycle of poems Sketches among the Poor which was published in Blackwood's Magazine in January 1837. In March 1837 her Aunt Lumb had a stroke, and died less than a month later. In 1840 William Howitt published Visits to Remarkable Places containing a contribution entitled Clopton Hall by "a lady", the first work written and published solely by Gaskell. In April 1840 Howitt published The Rural Life of England, which included her second work, Notes on Cheshire Customs.

In July 1841 the Gaskells travelled to Belgium and Germany. German literature had a strong influence on her short story writing in regard to theme and structure. In 1847 she published her first work of fiction Libbie Marsh's Three Eras in Howitt's Journal, using the pseudonym, "Cotton Mather Mills". Her next work The Sexton's Hero was published with the same name. She made her last use of the pseudonym in 1848 with the publication of her story Christmas Storms and Sunshine. Her first novel Mary Barton was published in October, 1848.

In 1850 the family moved to a villa at 84 Plymouth Grove. where Elizabeth wrote her remaining literary works while her husband held welfare committees and tutored the poor in his study. The Gaskells' social circle included literary greats, religious dissenters, and social reformers, including William and Mary Howitt. Charles Dickens and John Ruskin visited Plymouth Grove, as did American writers Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Eliot Norton, while conductor Charles Hallé, who lived close by, taught piano to one of their daughters. Her close friend Charlotte Brontë stayed there three times, and on one occasion hid behind the drawing room curtains as she was too shy to meet Gaskell's visitors.

In early 1850 Gaskell wrote to Charles Dickens, asking advice about assisting a girl named Pasley whom she had visited in prison. Pasley provided Gaskell with a model for the title character of Ruth in 1853. Lizzie Leigh was published in March and April, 1850, in the first numbers of Dickens's journal Household Words where many of her works were published including Cranford and, in 1854-55, North and South, her novella My Lady Ludlow, and short stories. In June 1855 Patrick Brontë asked her to write a biography of his daughter, Charlotte, and The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857. This played a significant role in developing her own (impending) literary career.

In 1859 Gaskell travelled to Whitby to gather material for Sylvia's Lovers, which was published in 1863. Her novella Cousin Phyllis was serialized in The Cornhill Magazine from November 1863 to February 1864. The serialization of her last novel Wives and Daughters began in August 1864 in The Cornhill. She died of a heart attack in 1865, while visiting a house she had purchased in Holybourne, Hampshire. Wives and Daughters was published in book form in early 1866, first in America, and then, ten days later, in England.

The house on Plymouth Grove remained in the Gaskell family until 1913, after which it stood empty and fell into disrepair. The University of Manchester acquired it in 1969 and in 2004 it was acquired by the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust. The trust raised money to restore it. Exterior renovations were completed in 2011, and the house is open for monthly tours while renovations continue.

On 25 September 2010 a memorial to Gaskell was dedicated in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. It takes the form of a panel in the Hubbard memorial window, above the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer. The panel was dedicated by her great-great-granddaughter Rosemary Dabbs and a wreath was laid.