Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Provincial Novel

by Wendy A. Craik

First published in 1975, this book places Elizabeth Gaskell amongst the major novelists of the nineteenth-century. It considers how she has sometimes been overlooked, or admired for very few of her works, or for reasons that are not in fact central to her art. W. A. Craik looks at Gaskell's full-length novels with three main purposes: to analyse her development as a novelist, her achievements, and the nature of her very original work; to see what she owes to earlier novelists, what she learns from them, and how far she is an innovator; and to put her in relation to those other novelists who write on similar themes with comparable aims. This book establishes Elizabeth Gaskelll's excellence in comparison with her peers by demonstrating how far she extended the possibilities of the novel, both in materials and techniques.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Wendy Ann Craik was born in East Finchley, North London, in 1934, and evacuated to the countryside in World War Two. After receiving a Ph.D. at Leicester University College, supervised by Monica Jones, she worked as a schoolteacher before entering academia. She was Reader in English at Aberdeen University, and Professor of English at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and has written four books on the nineteenth century novel.