Blogs & News

: Online Talk: ‘I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free’ – Emily and Anne Brontë

Elizabeth Gaskell’s famous biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë went a considerable way to creating the myth of the famous writer living up on the moors. But what of the image of Charlotte’s two groundbreaking literary sisters, Emily and Anne Brontë? How has our view of these trailblazing writers changed over the years? Book now Emily Brontë’s enduring classic Wuthering Heights makes her the author of one of the finest novels in the English language and shows her

: Online Event: From Page to Screen – An Evening with Andrew Davies

A special online evening with iconic screenwriter Andrew Davies, who brought us the much-loved adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (1999) alongside some of the best-loved film and TV of the last forty years, including the legendary BBC series of Pride and Prejudice (1995) starring Colin Firth. Emmy award-winning Andrew Davies is responsible for a host of classic adaptations including Middlemarch (1994), Emma (1996), Vanity Fair (1998), Bleak House (2005), Sense and Sensibility (2008) and Sanditon (2019)

: Online Talk: South and North Rather than North and South: Ellen Wilkinson, Elizabeth Gaskell and the ‘Big Strike’ novel

Elizabeth Gaskell may have been one of the first to write a ‘picket-line’ romance, in her much-loved classic North and South, but she was certainly not the last. In the centenary year of the ‘General Strike’ we uncover another novel which combines romance with industrial relations - Clash by another iconic Manchester woman: Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first women Labour MPs (Member of Parliament) and best known for leading the ‘Jarrow March’ of the unemployed in 1936.

: Online Talk: Elizabeth Gaskell- An Introduction

Described by the press after her death as ‘one of the greatest female novelists of all time’, Elizabeth Gaskell’s literary fame has risen and fallen over the years. Now this special introduction reveals the woman behind classic novels like North and South and Cranford. Book now Elizabeth Gaskell, once better-known as ‘Mrs Gaskell’, mastered a huge range of genres from ‘Condition of England’ novels to Gothic horror, short stories, biography, historical fiction and the rural comedy of Cranford.

: Online Talk: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fairy Stories

Wicked stepmothers. Prince Charming. Sleeping beauties. Fairy stories might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Elizabeth Gaskell. So put on your glass slipper and step into the deep dark woods for a fresh look at Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing. Many women writers have used the oral tradition of fairy tales to challenge accepted ideas and re-work traditional tales. Look below the surface in Elizabeth Gaskell and nothing is as it seems. Can