Blogs & News

Events : Feisty Females – New Online Course for Autumn 2025

You can enjoy a special treat this autumn. Elizabeth Gaskell’s House is delighted to announce a new online course about feisty females with the ever-popular Dr Sherry Ashworth. So from September you can take a look at literature's feisty females including some of your favourite heroines from classic novels like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. Literature is full of impressive female characters and we have picked four of the feistiest from your

Blogs & News : Your Invitation to Celebrate Ten Years of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House

“Oh, I can’t describe my home. It is home, and I can’t put its charm into words.” Margaret Hale, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855 Elizabeth Gaskell’s House has welcomed more than 50,000 visitors since its doors first opened in October 2014. Now in our 10th anniversary year, we are celebrating the decade since the beautiful restoration with a range of online events all about house and home… and you are cordially invited! Kick the season off with

Blogs & News : 2025 Events Season: Exploring the impact of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth

‘Nay, Ruth, you are not going to have secrets from me, are you?’ You are cordially invited to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House's 10-year anniversary season of Ruth events! These are dedicated to the most controversial of all Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels. Ruth is an infamous book. It was ‘banned, burned and denounced from the pulpit’ when it was published in 1853. Yet it is also a ground-breaking work and so is now recognised as the first mainstream novel to tell

Blogs & News : A Man’s World – New Online Course for Spring 2025

In our 10th anniversary year, Elizabeth Gaskell's House is delighted to announce a new online course with the ever-popular Dr Sherry Ashworth. This spring we take a look at literary men and masculinity. Join Sherry to ask what do Victorian novelists have to say about men as fathers, lovers, activists, wealth creators – and kings? In this new course, we will be looking at Elizabeth Gaskell’s John Barton in Mary Barton (father), John Thornton in North and South

Events : Wives and Daughters: An exciting events programme for you in 2024

'Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.' Wives and Daughters was Elizabeth Gaskell's last, and unfinished, novel. It has been called ‘the most underrated novel in English’. The story centers on young Molly’s response to her father’s new marriage and its impact on those around her. Set in a small English country town, the book is a literary masterpiece. Its wit and charm are often compared to writers like Jane