Blogs & News

: Online Talk: Writing Home – House and Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s literature

“Oh, I can't describe my home. It is home, and I can't put its charm into words” Margaret Hale, North and South, 1855 From October 2024 to September 2025 Elizabeth Gaskell’s House is celebrating its 10-year anniversary of opening the public. So, you are invited to join other literary fans as we explore themes of house and home in our online events. The stereotype of the Victorian home is a place of domestic bliss with an angelic woman

: Online Talk: Literary Locations – Finding Elizabeth Gaskell

As part of the 10-year anniversary celebrations of the opening of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, we’re celebrating the real-life homes that inspired this incredible writer. You are invited on a special online literary journey looking for the real locations of novels and short stories. Dr Diane Duffy takes you on a virtual visit to the houses and homes featured in Victorian classics including Cranford, North and South, Mary Barton, Wives and Daughters and more. In other words, you can

: Online Talk: Laughter and Literature – Comedy in Elizabeth Gaskell

“Out of the way! We are in the throes of an exceptional emergency! This is no occasion for sport- there is lace at stake!" Cranford, 1853 The hard-hitting novels of a Victorian minister’s wife may not be the most likely place to look for comedy, but Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing is packed full of mirth. Even in her social novel Ruth about an unmarried mother, there is room for a little laughter. Humour and grief can be regular bedfellows

: Online Talk: Sewing, Slavery and Social Change: Ruth and its Political Moment

In 1853 Elizabeth Gaskell brought out her novel Ruth about a teenage seamstress. Her city of Manchester was at the centre of the global cotton trade and her country was on the brink of the Crimean War. Unquestionably, public opinion was divided over class conflict and international events. Art and literature reflected concerns about the working and living conditions, and fears about the morality of seamstresses. Black Abolitionists on tour from America laid bare the links between Manchester’s cotton

: Online Talk: The Fallen Woman – Sex and Sin in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth

Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Ruth was banned and burned for its portrayal of a young woman who had sex before marriage. The story instantly became a ‘prohibited book’, even within her own home. For modern readers, there is no explicit sex in the book so it may be hard to understand the outraged response. What made Ruth such a dangerous book? Join Elizabeth Williams as she reveals the truth about Victorian attitudes to female sexuality and their impact on