GASKELL, Elizabeth Cleghorn Steven son, English novelist : b. Chelsea, 29 Sept. 1810; d. Alton, Hampshire, 12 Nov. 1865. She was brought up by an aunt at Knutsford in Cheshire, where she spent the greater part of her early life. This town is said to be the original of the village in her story of (Cran ford,' described as inhabited exclusively by maiden ladies and widows of limited means. She married in 1832 the Rev. William Gaskell (q.v.), a Unitarian clergyman then recently ap pointed minister of Cross Street Chapel, Man chester. Her first work, (Mary Barton,' ap peared in 1848. The Atheneum says it raised the Lancashire dialect almost to the level of the broad Doric used by Scott in his northern novels. In this, as in most of her works, Mrs. Gaskell appears as a social reformer. Her moral and economical theories may be ques tioned, but as a writer of fiction she wields artis tic and dramatic powers of a high order. (Mary Barton' represents the struggles formerly so rife in Lancashire, and which have since passed in new phases and into other quarters, between workmen and employers. The Moorland Cot
tage' appeared in 1850; and in 1853, her next novel,