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blog : Elizabeth Gaskell’s Children – Part 3 Florence Elizabeth

Florence has no talents under the sun; and is very nervous and anxious... Florence Elizabeth Gaskell 1842-1881 Florence, or Flossy as she was affectionately called, was born in October 1842,  just after the family’s move from 14 Dover Street to 121 Upper Rumford Street, a larger house further from the industrial centre of Manchester and nearer to the open the fields which the family could see from their windows.  Florence was, despite the comments made by her mother

blog : Elizabeth Gaskell’s Children – Part 2, Margaret Emily

Untidy, dreamy, and absent; but so brim full of I don’t know what to call it... Margaret Emily Gaskell 1837-1913 Margaret Gaskell, known as Meta, was born two and a half years after Marianne. In her diary for December 1837, Elizabeth writes: “Meta; 10 months old on the 5th of this month. She has a much more passionate temper than Marianne, perhaps much livelier. She is very bright and saucy when all goes right, and very affectionate.  The

blog : Elizabeth Gaskell’s Children-Part 1, Marianne.

…such a sense of duty and she obeys her sense Elizabeth Stevenson married Rev. William Gaskell at St John’s Church, Knutsford in 1832 and on 10th July 1833 she gave birth to a stillborn girl. Jenny Uglow writes in her biography “She saw the baby but did not give her a name.” This early death of a child had a huge impact on Elizabeth and in July 1836 she wrote a sonnet ‘On visiting the Grave of my