The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell
General Editor: Joanne Shattock
Advisory Editor: Angus Easson
Volume Editors: Joanne Shattock, Linda Peterson, Josie Billington, Alan Shelston, Charlotte Mitchell, Elisabeth Jay, Linda K Hughes, Deirdre d'Albertis, Marion Shaw, Joanne Wilkes
The Pickering Masters
978 1 85196 777 3: 234x156mm: £450.00/$795.00
978 1 85196 782 7: 234x156mm: £450.00/$795.00
Elizabeth Gaskell’s sudden death in November 1865, at the height of her career, prompted the Athenaeum to lament the passing of ‘if not the most popular, with small question, the most powerful and finished female novelist of an epoch singularly rich in female novelists’ (18 November 1865). Few of Gaskell's contemporaries were willing to consign her exclusively to the ranks of ‘lady novelists’, and late Victorian memoirists and critics measured her achievements against those of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot.
Gaskell’s literary output was prolific and varied. As well as five major novels she also wrote several novellas – the most famous of which, Cranford, was for many years her best known work – numerous short stories and articles for the periodical press, and an acclaimed biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë (1857). These volumes will reveal a writer who excelled in many genres, and whose impact on the world of mid-Victorian publishing was far-reaching.
The Pickering & Chatto edition of The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell is the first comprehensive critical edition of her work to be published. It brings together, for the first time, her journalism, some of which has never been republished, her extensive shorter fiction, which was published in various collections during her lifetime, her early personal writing, including a diary written between 1835 and 1838 when she was a young mother, her five full-length novels and The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
- Chosen as an Outstanding Academic Title of 2006 by CHOICE. This marks it as 'the best of the best in published scholarship'.
Contents
Volume 1
Journalism, Early Fiction and Personal Writings including:
Diary 1835–8, privately printed (1923); ‘On Visiting the Grave of my Stillborn Little Girl’ (1836); ‘Sketches among the Poor – No. I’, Blackwood’s Magazine (1837); ‘Clopton Hall’ in W Howit, Visits to Remarkable Places (1840); ‘Cheshire Customs’ in W Howit, The Rural Life of England (1840); ‘Manchester Christmas Trees’ in W Howit, The Rural Life of England (1840); ‘Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras’, ‘The Sexton’s Hero’, Howitt’s Journal (1847); ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’, Howitt’s Journal (1848); ‘Hand and Heart’, Sunday School Penny Magazine (1849); ‘Martha Preston’, Sartain’s Union Magazine (1850); ‘Lizzie Leigh’, ‘The Well of Pen-Morfa’, ‘The Heart of John Middleton’, Household Words (1850); ‘Disappearances’, Household Words (1851); Review of Spiritual Alchemy, Athenaeum (1851); Review of Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Athenaeum (1851); ‘Bessy’s Troubles at Home’, Sunday School Penny Magazine (1852); ‘The Schah’s English Gardener’, Household Words (1852); ‘Cumberland Sheep-Shearers’, Household Words (1853); ‘Traits and Stories of the Huguenots’, Household Words (1853); ‘Modern Greek Songs’, ‘Company Manners’, Household Words (1854); Preface, annotation and interpolated material to [M Cummins], Mabel Vaughan (1857); Preface to C Vecchi, Garibaldi at Caprera (1862); ‘Shams’, Fraser’s Magazine (1863); ‘An Italian Institution’, All the Year Round (1863); ‘Robert Gould Shaw’, Macmillan’s Magazine (1863); ‘French Life’, Fraser’s Magazine (1864); Review of Torrens, Lancashire Lessons, The Reader (1865); ‘Two Fragments of Ghost Stories’ (1906)
Volume 2
Novellas and Shorter Fiction: The Moorland Cottage, Cranford and Related Writing
The Moorland Cottage (1850); ‘The Last Generation in England’, Sartain’s Union Magazine (1849); ‘Mr Harrison’s Confessions’, Ladies’ Companion (1851); Cranford, Household Words (1851–3); ‘The Cage at Cranford’, All the Year Round (1863)
Volume 3
Novellas and Shorter Fiction: Round the Sofa and Tales from Household Words 1852–9
‘The Old Nurse’s Story’, A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire, Household Words (1852); ‘Morton Hall’, ‘My French Master’, Household Words (1853); ‘The Squire’s Story’, Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire, Household Words Extra Christmas Number (1853); ‘An Accursed Race’, Household Words (1855); ‘Half a Life-time Ago’, revised from ‘Martha Preston’, Household Words (1855); ‘The Poor Clare’, Household Words (1856); ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (1858); ‘My Lady Ludlow’, Household Words (1858); ‘The Sin of a Father’, reprinted as ‘Right at Last’, Household Words (1858); ‘The Manchester Marriage’, Household Words Extra Christmas Number (1858); ‘The Half-Brothers’, Round the Sofa (1859)
Volume 4
Novellas and Shorter Fiction: Cousin Phillis and other Tales from All the Year Round and the Cornhill Magazine 1859–64
‘Lois the Witch’, All the Year Round (1859); ‘The Ghost in the Garden Room’, reprinted as ‘The Crooked Branch’, The Haunted House, All the Year Round Extra Christmas Number (1859); ‘Curious if True’, Cornhill Magazine (1860); ‘The Grey Woman’, All the Year Round (1861); ‘Six Weeks at Heppenheim’, Cornhill Magazine (1862); ‘A Dark Night’s Work’, All the Year Round (1863); Cousin Phillis, Cornhill Magazine (1863–4); ‘How the First Floor went to Crowley Castle’, reprinted as ‘Crowley Castle’, Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings, All the Year Round Extra Christmas Number (1863)
Volume 5
Mary Barton (1848)
Volume 6
Ruth (1853)
Volume 7
North and South (1855)
Volume 8
The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)
Volume 9
Sylvia’s Lovers (1863)
Volume 10
Wives and Daughters (1866)
Reviews
'Long overdue, this edition of the writings of Elizabeth Gaskell is the first to appear in almost a century... [it] surpasses previous collections by including miscellaneous writings as well as novels, novellas, and short stories. All the material has been reedited and excellent explanatory notes and up-to-date bibliographies of Gaskell studies add to the value... Every research library must own this collection, and other libraries would do well to add these well-made and well-edited volumes to their 19th-century British literature collections. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all levels'
– CHOICE
'Beautifully printed, produced in fine bindings on long-lasting paper...in the twenty-first century Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing can receive the kind of attention that it deserves'
– Heather Glen, The Times Literary Supplement
'enormously valuable'
– Carolyne Van Der Meer, Brontë Studies
'her editors have chased obscure allusions, updated ever-increasing bibliographical data, noted textual variants, and provided fresh critical insights'
– Valerie Sanders, The Modern Language Review