ELIZABETH GASKELL WRITES TO A FRIEND GASKELL (Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865, Novelist, Author of 'Cranford')

Autograph Letter Signed to Mrs Scott saying she had “hoped to have been able to get over to Halliwell Lane today to call on Miss Bathurst, & explain to you that we are expecting some friends of Marianne’s tomorrow night, which will prevent our coming to you as we should much have liked; but I have been detained at home all day; and I must trust to our post being more speedy than usual in carrying this note out to Halliwell Lane. I heard of your return from Mrs James Heywood, & I should have called sooner for I wanted to see you: but I have been completely knocked up by the smell of house-painting. In great haste...”, 3 sides 8vo.,with some accounting notes on the blank 4th side, presumably by the recipient, no place, no date but the accounts dated September

On 30th August 1832 Elizabeth married Unitarian minister William Gaskell, in Knutsford. The Gaskells then settled in Manchester, where William was the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. Their first daughter was stillborn in 1833. Their next daughter Marianne was born in 1834. They had three more daughters. In March 1835 Gaskell began a diary documenting the development of her daughter Marianne: she explored parenthood, the values she placed on her role as a mother; her faith, and, later, relations between Marianne and her sister, Meta.
In 1850 the Gaskells moved to a villa at 84 Plymouth Grove and this letter is presumably from there.

Item Date:  1853

Stock No:  41760      £2500

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