Literature

Back by popular demand, Elizabeth Gaskell's House and the Brontë Parsonage Museum have a new short season of online events throughout May 2024 looking at the friendship between two remarkable literary women, Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell. The first in the series

We're going all out to celebrate International Women's Day (IWD) this year with local, national and international events (either in person or online) to mark this special day. International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements

'Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.' Wives and Daughters was Elizabeth Gaskell's last, and unfinished, novel. It has been called ‘the most underrated novel in English’. The story centers on young Molly’s response

This season of events at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House examines Elizabeth’s last, and for many her greatest novel, Wives and Daughters, published in monthly instalments from August 1864 to January 1866. Sadly, Elizabeth’s death on November 17 1865 meant that the final chapter was left unfinished.

Elizabeth’s plan was to reframe Charlotte Brontë as a proper lady in order to counter the scathing reviews of Jane Eyre by Lady Eastlake, who accused the author of: ‘a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste,