Literature and Writings
Gaskell had a fascination with language and was an expert on the Lancashire dialect. Extracts from his lectures on dialect were published in the Examiner, and the 1854 edition of Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was accompanied by his notes on dialect. He also published numerous pamphlets and sermons, and wrote or translated over seventy hymns, some of which are still sung.
His poem, 'Sketches among the Poor, No. 1' (co-written with his wife in the manner of Crabbe), was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1837, and his poetry collection Temperance Rhymes (1839) won the approval of Wordsworth. His poetry varied in form, but always employed plain language and attempted sensitive portrayals of characters drawn from the working classes. The poem 'Manchester Song' supplies two of the chapter epigraphs to Mary Barton.
Read more about this topic: William Gaskell
Famous quotes containing the words literature and/or writings:
“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)
“A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)