Значение слова GASKELL в Литературной энциклопедии

ELIZABETH CLEGHORN (STEVENSON) (1810-1865).-Novelist, _dau._ of William Stevenson, a Unitarian minister, and for some time Keeper of the Treasury Records. She _m._ William G., a Unitarian minister, at Manchester, and in 1848 _pub._ anonymously her first book, _Mary Barton_, in which the life and feelings of the manufacturing working classes are depicted with much power and sympathy. Other novels followed, _Lizzie Leigh_ (1855), _Mr. Harrison's Confessions_ (1865), _Ruth_ (1853), _Cranford_ (1851-3), _North and South_ (1855), _Sylvia's Lovers_ (1863), etc. Her last work was _Wives and Daughters_ (1865), which appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and was left unfinished. Mrs. G. had some of the characteristics of Miss Austen, and if her style and delineation of character are less minutely perfect, they are, on the other hand, imbued with a deeper vein of feeling. She was the friend of Charlotte Bronte (_q.v._), to whom her sympathy brought much comfort, and whose _Life_ she wrote. Of _Cranford_ Lord Houghton wrote, "It is the finest piece of humoristic description that has been added to British literature since Charles Lamb."