Blogs & News

: Online Reading Workshop – The Gothic – The Nurses’ Story and The Poor Clare by Elizabeth Gaskell

Take a walk on the wild side with our new reading course looking at horror, mystery and the darker side of the human condition. We’re taking on some giants of the Gothic to explore literature’s supernatural forces, from the terrible monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the wild and windy moors of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Many of your favourite women writers wrote Gothic novels so now is the time to dig a little deeper into the underbelly

: Online Reading Workshop – The Gothic – Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

Please note this session is now sold out but there is a repeat on Thursday 29 January. Book here Take a walk on the wild side with our new reading course looking at horror, mystery and the darker side of the human condition. We’re taking on some giants of the Gothic to explore literature’s supernatural forces, from the terrible monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the wild and windy moors of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Many of your

: 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.