The English author Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) wrote sociological novels that explored the ills of industrial England and novels of small-town life that are penetrating studies of character.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born on Sept. 29, 1810. Her mother died shortly thereafter, and she was sent to live with an aunt in Knutsford, a village in Cheshire. At the age of 15 she went to school at Stratford-on-Avon, where she remained for 2 years. She married the Reverend William Gaskell on Aug. 30, 1832.

The couple settled in industrial Manchester. There Elizabeth observed the extreme hardship of the workers and their struggles with the owners for a greater share in the profits of the mills. Her observations provided much of the background for Mary Barton (1848), her first novel. It was begun in 1845 to relieve her grief at the death of William, her fifth child and only son, and completed during intervals in a busy family...