The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Pickering Masters) 5-volume set

Elizabeth Gaskell’s sudden death in November 1865, at the height of her career, prompted the Athenaeum to lament the passing of ‘if not the most popular, with small question, the most powerful and finished female novelist of an epoch singularly rich in female novelists’ (18 November 1865). Few of Gaskell’s contemporaries were willing to consign her exclusively to the ranks of ‘lady novelists’, and late Victorian memoirists and critics measured her achievements against those of Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. The Pickering & Chatto edition of “The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell” is the first comprehensive critical edition of Gaskell’s work to be published. It brings together, for the first time, her journalism, some of which has never been republished, her extensive shorter fiction, which was published in various collections during her lifetime, her early personal writing, including a diary written between 1835 and 1838 when she was a young mother, her five full-length novels and “The Life of Charlotte Bronte”. The edition is fully reset. Copy texts have been carefully chosen, according to the publishing history of individual works. Textual variants are noted at the end of each volume and individual works are accompanied by a headnote detailing the circumstances of publication, together with full explanatory notes. A general introduction to the edition traces Gaskell’s reputation from lifetime reviews of individual works through to late Victorian assessments of her achievement, the waning of her popularity at the end of the nineteenth century and its revival in the middle of last century. Throughout this process the role played by biographies and by the publication of her letters will be emphasised. The introduction also discusses the history of the earlier editions and collections of Gaskell’s works and offers a rationale for the organisation of this definitive edition. In addition each volume contains a critical introduction to the text(s) included in the volume.