SOURCE: "A Habit of Stories," in Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, Faber and Faber, 1993, pp. 236-58.

In the following excerpt, Uglow explores the fifteen year period (1850-1865) during which Gaskell associated herself with Charles Dickens and wrote most of her short fiction.

'I did feel as if I had something to say about it that I must say, and you know I can tell stories better than any other way of expressing myself.

This was how Elizabeth would explain Ruth to her friend Mary Green. Her new fame forced her to ask herself why she wrote. Until the late 1840s writing had been a private hobby, and she could justify the publication of the Howitt's stories and Mary Barton by her Unitarian belief in the moral function of art and in the duty to state the truth and expose social evils. Writing fiction was permissible as a...