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First published in 1975, this book places Elizabeth Gaskell amongst the major novelists of the nineteenth-century. It considers how she has sometimes been overlooked, or admired for very few of her works, or for reasons that are not in fact central to her art. W. A. Craik looks at Gaskell’s full-length novels with three main purposes: to analyse her development as a novelist, her achievements, and the nature of her very original work; to see what she owes to earlier novelists, what she learns from them, and how far she is an innovator; and to put her in relation to those other novelists who write on similar themes with comparable aims. This book establishes Elizabeth Gaskelll’s excellence in comparison with her peers by demonstrating how far she extended the possibilities of the novel, both in materials and techniques.
In the last few decades Elizabeth Gaskell has become a figure of growing importance in the field of Victorian literary studies. She produced work of great variety and scope in the course of a highly successful writing career that lasted for about twenty years from the mid-1840s to her unexpected death in 1865. The essays in this Companion draw on recent advances in biographical and bibliographical studies of Gaskell and cover the range of her impressive and varied output as a writer of novels, biography, short stories, and letters. The volume, which features well-known scholars in the field of Gaskell studies, focuses throughout on her narrative versatility and her literary responses to the social, cultural, and intellectual transformations of her time. This Companion will be invaluable for students and scholars of Victorian literature, and includes a chronology and guide to further reading.
Building on theories of space and place, this collection examines the global reach of Elizabeth Gaskell’s influence and places her work within the narrative of British letters and narrative identity. In keeping with the theme of progress and change, the essays follow parallel narratives that acknowledge both the angst and nostalgia produced by industrial progress and the excitement and awe occasioned by the potential of the empire.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.
"First published in 1972 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted with corrections by Oak Knoll Press/St. Paul's Bibliographies in 1995. Reprinted in 2000, 2002, 2006 & 2007"--T.p. verso.