Blogs & News

: Trailblazing Women Stitching Workshops

Join us for two free stitching workshops at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House on Thursday 1 February & Thursday 8 February and help create a piece of textile art for International Women's Day. The Trailblazers! Women of Greater Manchester group will be using these workshops to celebrate the achievements of some of Manchester's great women - past and present. The resulting creations will be displayed in Manchester Central Library on Saturday 9 March. No experience is necessary. All materials and

: Online Talk: Mary Barton and the Year of Revolutions: ‘John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist’

Elizabeth Gaskell’s debut novel Mary Barton (1848) is recognised as one of the most important Victorian works to explore the working class Chartist movement, in this case through the character of Mary’s father, John Barton. Chartism was a working class movement demanding political reform. Elizabeth Gaskell made these radical politics the backdrop to her story of love and action adventure in Manchester. Now popular speaker Prof Mike Sanders is back to reveal the historical truth behind the story. The novel

: Online Talk: Song of the Shirt

With fingers weary and worn,    With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags,    Plying her needle and thread—       Stitch! stitch! stitch! Thomas Hood wrote the famous poem The Song of the Shirt (1843), in response to a newspaper report about a widow and seamstress named Mrs Biddell who was forced, like many seamstresses of her day, to work for a pittance on which she could barely survive. So how can the poem help us better understand Elizabeth Gaskell's popular novel Mary

: Online Talk: ‘My joy was in the North Country’: Beatrix Potter, the North, and the Gaskell family

Beatrix Potter is best known for her iconic children’s characters including Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle Duck, Squirrel Nutkin and many more but she was also a keen natural scientist and conservationist. From her unloved home in Kensington, her love of the ‘North country’ drove her to pursue a life of freedom in the Lake District. In this talk, National Trust curator Helen Antrobus will explore Potter’s lifelong affiliation with the north, her relationship with her family’s

: Online Talk: Writing Women

Join Dr Diane Duffy for a special look at 19th century women writers’ experiences, starting with Elizabeth Gaskell and reflecting on the lives of giants of literature including Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot. How were their experiences different to male writers? What did the reading public think of women? How did women writers manage the domestic and creative life? Did they stretch or break the boundaries of convention? Find out more about the writing