Charlotte Nicholls, commonly known as Charlotte Brontë, was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. Jane Eyre went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature.
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1847–1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. 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. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–1855), and Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), all of which were adapted for television by the BBC.
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.
Cranford is an episodic novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. It first appeared in instalments in the magazine Household Words, then was published with minor revisions as a book with the title Cranford in 1853. The work slowly became popular and from the start of the 20th century it saw a number of dramatic treatments for the stage, the radio and TV.
Wives and Daughters, An Every-Day Story is a novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. It was partly written whilst Gaskell was staying with the salon hostess Mary Elizabeth Mohl at her home on the Rue de Bac in Paris. When Mrs Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, it was not quite complete, and the last section was written by Frederick Greenwood.
Robert Williams Buchanan was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist.
All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to differences with his former publisher.
Frederick Greenwood was an English journalist, editor, and man of letters. He completed Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Wives and Daughters after her death in 1865.
Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life was the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.
North and South is a social novel published in 1854–55 by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1866) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times. At first, Gaskell wanted the novel to be titled after the heroine, Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialised, insisted on North and South.
Caroline Wigley Clive was an English writer known by the pseudonym V. She was known chiefly as the author of IX Poems that when first published, took their place in the forefront of then-contemporary feminine verse. Clive wrote all her life, was a brilliant conversationalist, was held in the highest regard within an exceptionally notable intellectual circle, and carried on a large correspondence.
Aunt Phillis's Cabin; or, Southern Life as It Is by Mary Henderson Eastman is a plantation fiction novel, and is perhaps the most read anti-Tom novel in American literature. It was published by Lippincott, Grambo & Co. of Philadelphia in 1852 as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, published earlier that year. The novel sold 20,000–30,000 copies, far fewer than Stowe's novel, but still a strong commercial success and bestseller. Based on her growing up in Warrenton, Virginia, of an elite planter family, Eastman portrays plantation owners and slaves as mutually respectful, kind, and happy beings.
The Cornhill Magazine (1860–1975) was a monthly Victorian magazine and literary journal named after the street address of the founding publisher Smith, Elder & Co. at 65 Cornhill in London. In the 1860s, under the editorship of William Makepeace Thackeray, the paper's large circulation peaked around 110,000. Due to emerging competitors, circulation fell to 20,000 by 1870. The following year, Leslie Stephen took over as editor. When Stephen left in 1882, circulation had further fallen to 12,000. The Cornhill was purchased by John Murray in 1912, and continued to publish issues until 1975.
Brain fever is an outdated medical term that was used as a synonym for phrensy, beginning in early 19th century medical literature. Supposedly the brain becomes inflamed and causes a variety of symptoms, most notably mental confusion, and can lead to death. The terminology is romanticized in Victorian literature, where it typically describes a potentially life-threatening illness brought about by a severe emotional upset, and much less often fatal than in medicine.
The bibliography of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) includes more than a dozen major novels, many short stories, several plays, several non-fiction books, and individual essays and articles. Dickens's novels were serialized initially in weekly or monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.
Mr. Harrison’s Confessions is an 1851 extended story by Elizabeth Gaskell about a doctor in a small English country town, benefitting from familiarity with the work of a general practitioner in Gaskell's own family. Episodes from the story and other works were adapted into the 2007 television series based on her novel Cranford.
My Lady Ludlow is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It originally appeared in the magazine Household Words in 1858, and was republished in Round the Sofa in 1859, with framing passages added at the start and end.
The Poor Clare is a short story by English Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell. First serialised in three installments in 1856 Charles Dickens' popular magazine Household Words, The Poor Clare is a gothic ghost story about a young woman unwittingly cursed by her own grandmother.
Cousin Phillis is a British television series which was originally broadcast on BBC One in 1982. It is an adaptation of the 1864 novel of the same title by Elizabeth Gaskell. A wedding scene was filmed on location at the Baptist Chapel, Great Warford.
