The Underrated Victorian Author To Read If You Love Jane Austen And Brontë
Last year, fellow Jane Austen fans had a bumper harvest of new shows and audiobooks as part of the 250th anniversary of her birth.
And though the response to Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film version of Wuthering Heights has been pretty mixed, there’s no denying it’s brought about a bit of a Brontë boom; sales of the book have skyrocketed.
(If you ask us, that’s a good reason to adapt the two Brontë novels that have never had a TV or movie version made).
To me, that also means we’re long overdue for an Elizabeth Gaskell revival. After all, the author is said to have been influenced by Austen’s Pride & Prejudice when writing North & South (to great success, IMO).
She also wrote the world’s first controversial Brontë biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë; she had been friends with the subject.
Who is Elizabeth Gaskell?
The writer, born in 1810 (six years before Charlotte Brontë, eight years before Emily, and 10 years before Anne; she was seven when Jane Austen died) was a Victorian novelist.
Her father, William Stevenson, was a journalist, and her mother, Elizabeth, died when she was just over one. After that, the author-to-be moved to her aunt Hannah’s home in Cheshire (this home would serve as the basis for Cranford).
As an adult, she married William Gaskell, a minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. Incidentally, Jane Austen’s dad was a reverend, and so was the Brontës’ father.
Once married, Gaskell published some short stories and taught in a Sunday school. She had four daughters and a son, who died aged nine months.
Her husband is said to have encouraged her to write a novel to help her handle the grief. After that, she published some books for Charles Dickens’ journals – including Cranford.
She was exceptionally well-connected to the great minds, literary and otherwise, of her time. She had connections to Florence Nightingale, was mates with Charlotte Brontë, and also hung out with the likes of John Ruskin, the Carlyles, and Charles Kingsley.
Gaskell passed away suddenly in 1865. That’s nine years after Charlotte Brontë.
Which novels did she publish?
Gaskell’s longer works include:
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Mary Barton (1848)
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The Moorland Cottage (1850)
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Ruth (1853)
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Cranford (1853)
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North and South (1855)
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The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)
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My Lady Ludlow (1858)
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Sylvia’s Lovers (1863)
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A Dark Night’s Work (1863)
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Cousin Phillis (1864)
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Wives and Daughters (incomplete,1866).
So why should I read her?
Sometimes I think that Gaskell’s work was treated in her day the way Austen’s is often treated in ours; she was deemed a little prim, a little traditional, a little sentimental, even regressive and unintellectual.
But any serious reader ought to be able to spot her wit and even subversion, or at least playfulness, a couple of books in.
Like George Eliot and Jane Austen, she dealt with the question of women’s place in the world – probably not uninformed by her close circle of accomplished women friends – in her correspondence, articles, and novels.
Her disagreement with Florence Nightingale, about the ability of brilliant women to run a household – or more precisely, their ability to be brilliant while running a household – feels strikingly relevant.
She thought the two could be reconciled, which shows in her books; I found Cranford clever in that I ridiculed its older, posher, slightly deluded characters at first, and then chided myself for doing so at its tender end.
Still, nobody sane reads a book because it’s worthy. I love Gaskell because she’s as funny as Austen, though less bit, and sometimes as able as Eliot to capture rural life well.
Plus, you could argue North & South is a very successful Pride & Prejudice knockoff, which fans of Bridget Jones know should never be sniffed at.
I think The New York Times were right to call her a “very Victorian feminist”. And I reckon fans of Brontë and Austen will enjoy her novels immensely; I certainly did.
