Biography
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (née Stevenson) was born September 29, 1810, and died November 12, 1865. She was an author and biographer whose work often delved into the manifestations and effects of class disparity in Victorian England.
Gaskell was the youngest of eight children born to the English Stevenson family, though only she and one of her brothers, John Stevenson, lived to adulthood. After Gaskell’s mother died just over a year after giving birth to her, Gaskell’s father sent her to live with her maternal aunt, Hannah Lumb, in Cheshire. The author eventually chronicled much of Cheshire’s character and setting in her episodic novel, Cranford. She received a classical education while living with her aunt, and her family encouraged her to pursue her writing. In 1832, she married minister William Gaskell, with whom she had several children.
While Gaskell’s most enduring work is likely her novels—Cranston, North and South, and Wives and Daughters—in which she criticizes social mores and values of the time, she was also an accomplished writer of short tales. Charles Dickens published much of her Gothic-leaning work in his magazine Household Words.
Below is a collection of Gaskell’s most notable short fiction. Read at your own discretion—and please, enjoy.
Short Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell
Disappearances (1851)
The Old Nurse’s Story (1852)
The Poor Clare (1856)
Lois the Witch (1859)
The Grey Woman (1861)
Curious, If True (c. 1861)
Two Fragments of Ghost Stories (c. 1850s–1860s)
The Raven Post 