Cranford Annotated

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was born on September 29, 1810, in London, England. She was the youngest of eight children, with only her brother John surviving infancy. Her father, William Stevenson, was a Unitarian priest, and her mother, Elizabeth Holland, died 13 months after giving birth to her youngest daughter, leaving a bewildered husband with little choice but to send Elizabeth to live with her mother's sister in Cheshire. Elizabeth spent several years without seeing her father, to whom she was devoted, and as she grew up, her future was uncertain, as she lacked personal wealth and a stable home. In 1832, she married William Gaskell, who worked as an assistant minister in a Unitarian church in Manchester. They settled in the city, and she assisted him in his work, providing assistance to the destitute and working as a teacher in the Sunday School, where reading and writing were taught. The city of Manchester, where the family lived, was at the epicenter of significant cultural transformation and radical political action. Elizabeth recognized these social conflicts and used them in her work. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her work is therefore of interest to both social historians and lovers of literature.