Event: Online Talk, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Short Stories – An Introduction

Join popular speaker Elizabeth Williams for this intriguing introduction to a different side of Elizabeth Gaskell’s story-telling.

Better known for her classic novels, Elizabeth Gaskell was a prolific writer of short stories. Charles Dickens knew this and encouraged her to write for his literary magazine.

Works like the much-loved Cranford started as short stories. Others, like Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras and Lizzie Leigh, drew on themes of female friendship, industrialism and class relations that would later feature in novels such as Mary Barton or North and South.

So, where did Elizabeth Gaskell get her ideas from? What inspired her to write in this format and why did she cover so many genres?