In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden.

Mrs. Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on 29 September 1810 in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, London, now 93 Cheyne Walk.

He moved to London in 1806 on the understanding that he would be appointed private secretary to James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale, who was to become Governor General of India.

When she died 13 months after giving birth to Gaskell,[3] her husband sent the baby to live with Elizabeth's sister, Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire.

[6] Much of Mrs. Gaskell's childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with her aunt Hannah Lumb in Knutsford, the town she immortalized as Cranford.

[9] From 1821 to 1826 she attended a school in Warwickshire run by the Misses Byerley, first at Barford and from 1824 at Avonbank outside Stratford-on-Avon,[3] where she received the traditional education in arts, the classics, decorum and propriety given to young ladies from relatively wealthy families at the time.

[11] The Gaskells then settled in Manchester, where William was the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel and longest-serving Chair of the Portico Library.

Marianne and Meta boarded at the private school conducted by Rachel Martineau, sister of Harriet, a close friend of Elizabeth.

German literature came to have a strong influence on her short stories, the first of which she published in 1847 as Libbie Marsh's Three Eras, in Howitt's Journal, under the pseudonym "Cotton Mather Mills".

But other influences including Adam Smith's Social Politics enabled a much wider understanding of the cultural milieu in which her works were set.

In Manchester, Elizabeth wrote her remaining literary works, while her husband held welfare committees and tutored the poor in his study.

Elizabeth's friend Charlotte Brontë stayed there three times, and on one occasion hid behind the drawing room curtains as she was too shy to meet the Gaskells' other visitors.

[18][19] In early 1850 Gaskell wrote to Charles Dickens asking for advice about assisting a girl named Pasley whom she had visited in prison.

[21] Mrs. Gaskell's novels, with the exception of Cranford, gradually slipped into obscurity during the late 19th century; before 1950, she was dismissed as a minor author with good judgment and "feminine" sensibilities.

[24] In the early 21st century, with Mrs. Gaskell's work "enlisted in contemporary negotiations of nationhood as well as gender and class identities",[25] North and South – one of the first industrial novels describing the conflict between employers and workers – was recognized as depicting complex social conflicts and offering more satisfactory solutions through Margaret Hale: spokesperson for the author and Gaskell's most mature creation.

[citation needed] Even though her writing conforms to Victorian conventions, including the use of the name "Mrs. Gaskell", she usually framed her stories as critiques of contemporary attitudes.

[28] Gaskell was influenced by the writings of Jane Austen, especially in North and South, which borrows liberally from the courtship plot of Pride and Prejudice.

[29] She was an established novelist when Patrick Brontë invited her to write a biography of his daughter, though she worried, as a writer of fiction, that it would be "a difficult thing" to "be accurate and keep to the facts.

[31] Unitarianism urges comprehension and tolerance toward all religions and even though Gaskell tried to keep her own beliefs hidden, she felt strongly about these values which permeated her works; in North and South, "Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together.

In North and South Margaret Hale suggests redding up (tidying) the Bouchers' house and even offers jokingly to teach her mother words such as knobstick (strike-breaker).

[34] In 1854 she defended her use of dialect to express otherwise inexpressible concepts in a letter to Walter Savage Landor: ... you will remember the country people's use of the word "unked".

I can't find any other word to express the exact feeling of strange unusual desolate discomfort, and I sometimes "potter" and "mither" people by using it.

[45] Manchester City Council have created an award in Gaskell's name, given to recognize women's involvement in charitable work and improvement of lives.