The Routledge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell brings together twenty-five chapters by emerging and established scholars that address Gaskells works, networks, contexts, and legacies. Contributors draw on a range of approaches including ecocriticism, queer theory, and studies in emotion. Particular attention is paid to the intersections between race, class, gender and religion in Gaskells fiction, as well as to the ongoing afterlife of her work in fiction, film, web-series, and fanfiction.
The Companion is divided into three parts. The first, Texts, showcases innovative readings of individual works, including well-known and much-studied novels, the biography of Charlotte Brontë, and less-familiar texts such as shorter tales, non-fiction pieces, and letters. The second part, Themes, features chapters that connect Gaskells novels, short fiction, journalism, and life writing in various combinations to present cutting-edge perspectives on the writers oeuvre in relation to many cultural and literary concerns including the built environment, material and visual culture, abolition, and the rituals of mourning. The final part, Legacies, considers the reception of Gaskells writings from the late nineteenth century to the present day, addressing their adaptation into multiple forms and media.
With its international and comprehensive scope, this volume offers an invaluable resource which attests that Gaskell continues to be a writer worthy of substantial critical attention and signals new directions in Gaskell studies and Victorian studies more widely.
Introduction - Elizabeth Ludlow and Rebecca Styler; Part I: Texts;
1.
Correspondence, Sociability, and Elizabeth Gaskell - Anne Longmuir;
2.
Elizabeth Gaskells Professional Writing Life - Joanne Shattock;
3. Phantoms
of the past: Domestic Terror and Family Secrets in Elizabeth Gaskells A
Manchester Marriage, Lizzie Leigh and A Dark Nights Work - Emma Liggins;
4. Want, Famine and Faith: Elizabeth Gaskells Historical Short Fiction -
Sara Malton;
5. Sympathy, Grief and Contagious Emotions in Elizabeth
Gaskells Mary Barton - David McAllister;
6. Female Slapstick in Elizabeth
Gaskells Cranford: Bodies, Patriarchy, Agency - Louise Lee;
7. Womens Work
and the Industrial Context in Elizabeth Gaskells Fallen Woman Novel Ruth -
Michelle Beth Chong;
8. The Social Lives of Books in Elizabeth Gaskells
North and South - Marcela Santos Brigida;
9. Flawed masterpiece: Biography,
Reviews and Elizabeth Gaskells The Life of Charlotte Brontë - Claire
OCallaghan;
10. The Darwinian Landscape of Sylvia's Lovers: Elizabeth
Gaskell's Novel of Struggle and Despair - Lauren Cameron;
11. Nurturing
Science in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters - Tamara Wagner; Part II:
Themes;
12. Architecture and the Built Environment: Heterogeneous Spaces and
Semi-Permeable Thresholds in Elizabeth Gaskells Writing - Ben Moore;
13.
Getting '[ be]wildered on the fells': Navigating Upland Ecologies in Elizabeth
Gaskell's Cumbrian Tales - Anna Burton;
14. Queer Approaches to Elizabeth
Gaskells Fiction - Jessica Campbell;
15. Elizabeth Gaskell and Religion: The
Time of the Kingdom of God - Elizabeth Ludlow;
16. Elizabeth Gaskell and
Simplicity: The Aesthetics of Virtue and Class Prejudice - Jo Carruthers;
17.
Elizabeth Gaskell and Material Culture: Mary Bartons Ragged Valentine -
Monica F. Cohen;
18. Womens Empowerment in Elizabeth Gaskells
Pre-Raphaelite Reconfigurations - Sophia Andres;
19. Global Gaskell,
Manchester and the Abolitionist Struggle - Ingrid Hanson;
20. Race,
Patriarchy, and Empire in Gaskells Accounts of Systemic Injustice beyond
Manchester Life - Maeve Adams;
21. Death, Dying, and the Rites of Mourning
in Elizabeth Gaskells Fiction - Josie Billington; Part III: Legacies;
22.
Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Stage - Julianne Smith;
23. Elizabeth
Gaskells Transatlantic Legacies: Margaret Hales Daughters in
Nineteenth-Century US Industrial Fiction - Rebecca Styler;
24. Elizabeth
Gaskells Cultural Reception: Illustration, Appropriation, and Fan Fiction -
Thomas Recchio;
25. Transmedia Gaskell: Two Web Series Adaptations of
Elizabeth Gaskells North and South - Chris Louttit; Index
Elizabeth Ludlow is Associate Professor of Literature and Religion at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. She is the author of Christina Rossetti and the Bible: Waiting with the Saints (2014) and Prayer and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Womens Writing (2025), the editor of The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century (2020), and co-editor, with Koenraad Claes, of The Nineteenth-Century Present: Literature, Print Culture and Historicity (2025). She has published work on the literary and artistic legacy of St Monica of Hippo and on authors including Elizabeth Gaskell, Josephine Butler, George Eliot, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Rebecca Styler is Associate Professor of English at the University of Lincoln, UK. She is author of Literary Theology by Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (2010) and The Maternal Image of God in Victorian Literature (2024). She is editor of Nineteenth-Century Religion, Literature and Society: Traditions (2020), and is co-editor of the Gaskell Journal. She has published chapters and articles on religious innovations in nineteenth-century literature by women including Elizabeth Gaskell, Josephine Butler, and Charlotte Brontë, and by authors of utopian texts, ghost stories, and spiritual auto/biography.
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