Definition
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell’s fiction marked the emergence under industrial capitalism of the modern labor movement, women’s rights campaigns, and British imperialism. Born into an era of political turmoil and social unrest, Gaskell approached her work as a writer and activist with a keen awareness of her role in participating in social change.
Introduction
Born into an era of political turmoil and social unrest, Elizabeth Cleghorn (Stevenson) Gaskell (1810–1865) approached her work as a writer and activist with a keen awareness of the role of educated, middle-class women such as herself in mediating as well as participating in social change. In a career that spanned key decades – from the 1840s through 1860s – Gaskell’s fiction marked the emergence under industrialcapitalism of the modern labor movement, women’s rights campaigns, and British imperialism. Her identity as an author and the generic contours of her oeuvre transcend neat categorization: the Gaskell of...
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d’Albertis, D. (2022). Gaskell, Elizabeth. In: Scholl, L., Morris, E. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78318-1_11
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