Blogs & News

: Online Event: Elizabeth Gaskell V George Eliot – The Moorland Cottage V The Mill on the Floss

In the mid-19th century, two titans of English literature - Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot - set out to explore the tension between personal yearning and family duty. But while their novels shared a common rural landscape, the women themselves couldn't have been more different. Book Now George Eliot was private and intellectual, while Elizabeth was outgoing, gossipy and deeply shocked by the scandal of her fellow writer’s personal life. Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Moorland Cottage introduced the quiet

: Online Talk: Victorian Gothic – Haunted Houses and Night-time Terrors

Cross the threshold into a world of flickering gaslight and cold stone. Step beyond the velvet curtains of the Victorian home to discover the era’s greatest Gothic writers, from the atmospheric dread of Wuthering Heights to the suffocating psychology of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Book now Find out more about the psychological stories of terror written by Elizabeth Gaskell's contemporaries where crumbling buildings reflect unravelling psyches. We'll consider terrifying tales about ancestral curses, haunted railways, dead

: Online Talk: Mary Shelley Beyond Frankenstein

The spark of life was only the beginning. Whilst popular culture remembers the lightning flash and the stitched-together creature, Frankenstein remains one of the most searching meditations on science, loneliness, and what it means to be human. Remarkably, Mary Shelley was still a teenager when she wrote it. Book now From the icy wastes of the Arctic in Frankenstein to the uncanny resurrections and transformations of her shorter fiction, this online event celebrates the enduring imagination of the so-called “Mother

: Online Talk: The Shadows of Salem – Myth V Reality in Lois the Witch and Other Tales

Does literature reveal the truth behind history or does it simply create a more haunting story? Discover how Elizabeth Gaskell drew on the real Salem Witch Trails of 1692 to write her 1859 novella, Lois the Witch. Then take a look at other witchy tales from the dark side. Book now Join us for an evening of historical unmasking as we explore the tragic story of Lois Barclay, an English orphan caught in a whirlwind of Puritan fanaticism

: Online Event: From the Dashwoods to Cranford – Sisterhood in the Worlds of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell

Step into the elegant but precarious world of the Dashwood sisters in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The rational Elinor and the impetuous Marianne share a sisterly bond that endures despite all outside challenges. Book now Sisterhood was a key theme in many of Jane Austen’s best-loved novels from the close relationship of Lizzy and Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice to the difficult relationship between the Elliot sisters in Persuasion. So how does literature reflect reality and