So I have been ruminating on another northern writer and jotting down some flotsam and jetsom in my sketchbook which may or may not have any relevance eventually when I sift it through.
Mrs Gaskell is a natural follow-on from the Brontes as she was a friend and, famously, the biographer of Charlotte Bronte.
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| Stage 1! |
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was married to a unitarian minister and came relatively late to novel writing. Most of them were written in a rather grand-looking seven bedroomed Italianate villa in Manchester. The Gaskells rented the house for £150 a year. At that time Plymouth Grove was described as being "beyond the manufacturing district, in view of open fields" and to complete the semi-rural ambience, there was a cow, pigs and chickens in the garden.
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| My research - ragbag style |
Charlotte Bronte stayed at the Gaskell residence on three occasions and on one of them hid, Jane Eyre-like, behind the drawing room curtains because she was too shy to meet the other visitors. Now there's an idea for one of the windows .........
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