Gaskell House Blogs

Quiz – How Well Do You Know Elizabeth Gaskell’s House? Part 5

This six-part quiz will test your knowledge of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. We will be posting four questions a week for six weeks, each week based on a different room or area of the House.

The answers can all be found within our blogs and social media posts.

You can also find some of the answers in the two blogs 10 things you might not know about Elizabeth Gaskell’s House and Six Famous Visitors to 84 Plymouth Grove.

It’s purely for fun. We won’t be scoring you – the answers are at the bottom of the page, below the picture.

Part 5 The First Floor

1. Meta Gaskell was a talented painter and considered becoming a professional artist. Who advised her on her painting and wrote a book that Meta and Elizabeth greatly admired?
   
   
2. Which book returned to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in 2018 after a 110-year journey?
   
   
3. Which Manchester company supplied most of the wallpaper for the House?
   
   
4. The Gaskells were given a kitten by Mme Mohl, Elizabeth’s friend in Paris. What was its name?
   
   

Answers

1. John Ruskin advised Meta Gaskell on her painting. Meta and Elizabeth also greatly admired his book “Modern Painters” and he said of Cranford “I do not know when I have read a more finished…study of human nature…Nor was I ever more sorry to come to a book’s end.” You can see more about the relationship between the Gaskells and Ruskin in our exhibition “My Dear Mr Ruskin…” Read more about John Ruskin
   
   
2. A first edition copy of Cranford returned to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in 2018 after a 110-year journey. It has an 1853 dedication from Elizabeth to her friend Eliza Shuttleworth and a dedication from Meta Gaskell in 1908 to the Master of Peterhouse College. You can see it displayed on the first floor. Read more about the copy of Cranford.
   
   
3. Little Greene in Ashton supplied most of the wallpapers. The Little Greene wallpaper shown in the photograph is called “Grosvenor Street, Cornflower” and is ready and waiting to be used in Elizabeth’s bedroom, which we are currently refurbishing. Read more about the Bedroom refurbishment.
   
   
4. The kitten was called Cranford. Elizabeth described it as having “very long hair and soft pretty eyes.” Cranford the Cat leads our children’s trail around the House. Among the pets they owned was also a dog called Lion. Read more about Cranford the cat