Mary Barton

About the AuthorGaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on September 29, 1810. Her family lived in Chelsea (now Cheyne Walk.) After her mother died when Gaskell was still a toddler, her father, William, took her to North England to stay with an aunt. He remarried, and didn t see her again until she was twelve years old, causing her to feel abandoned. At twenty, she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister like her father, and moved to 1 Dover Street, Manchester. She had four daughters, and worked as a pastor s wife among the young girls who labored long hours in the city s cotton mills. A frequent traveler, the nature of her foreign correspondence reveals that she was a private person she wanted the letters burned who was more industrious and organized than passionate.