Ghosts in the Pantry. (Free subscription) | 29/11/2008
I've just finished reading North and South. One of those books where it feels bittersweet to get to the last chapter. Given my pathological fondness for unresolved sexual tension, this was a really good book. I won't spoil it for those who have not yet read it, but for the bulk of the book the main characters are more conscious of detesting than loving each other. (50 points). The female protagonist,...
ReadySteadyBlog (Free subscription) | 17/11/2008
Via the Manchester Evening News : Work will begin early next year on the £2.5m restoration of one of English literature's most significant landmarks. Number 84 Plymouth Grove in Ardwick is the house where Elizabeth Gaskell wrote many of her novels, including Cranford and Wives and Daughters . Historians have been working and fundraising for the last decade to preserve the house and Manchester...
Bill Peschel (Free subscription) | yesterday
O n this day in 1850, novelist Elizabeth Gaskell expressed concerns about her publisher Edward Chapman's choice of title for her next title: My dear Sir, I do not at all like the title you have chosen. . . May it, please, be December Days, which is much more suggestive of the quiet tone of the story. . . . I will disown that book if you call it The Fagot; — the name of my book is December...
AustenBlog . . . she's everywhere (Free subscription) | 17/11/2008
Several Alert Janeites (thanks to Cinthia, Sylvia M., Maria L., and Patty) have written to us with the news that a poster at the C19 forum, citing dependable sources, claims the BBC has engaged Sandy Welch, who wrote the screenplays for the BBC’s magnificent adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South as well as the [...]
Manchester Evening News (Free subscription) | 13/11/2008
The former home of Elizabeth Gaskell New chapter in life of writer's home Jill Burdett 13/11/2008WORK will begin early next year on the £2.5m restoration of one of English literature's most significant landmarks.Number 84 Plymouth Grove in Ardwick is the house where Elizabeth Gaskell wrote many of her novels, including Cranford and Wives and Daughters.Historians have been...
A Work in Progress (Free subscription) | 13/11/2008
... A book with a "relative" in the title. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall. A book with a "body part" in the title. Cover Her Face by P.D. James. Eye in the Door by Pat Barker. Every Eye by Isobel English. A book with a "building" in its title. House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse. The Drinking Den by...
The Telegraph (Free subscription) | 30/10/2008
advertisementMy own particular favourites are contained in The Virago Book of Ghost Stories, which includes Wharton's uncanny masterpiece, The Eyes, and Mrs Gaskell's equally eerie narrative, The Old Nurse's Story. I'd recommend the entire anthology, but Mrs Gaskell's is best of all on a dark autumnal evening, when the clocks have just gone back; for her tale rewinds time yet is also...
BrontëBlog (Free subscription) | 21/10/2008
The Times reports that Ted Hughes's papers have been acquired by the British Library. As Erica Wagner points out, this Brontëite's papers will be in good company there: Here is Charlotte Brontë's “autograph fair copy” of Jane Eyre, from 1847. As Howard notes, in her biography, Elizabeth Gaskell described Charlotte's “clear, legible, delicate traced writing” - see for yourself. There it...
