Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
1810 - 1865
Born in London in 1810, Elizabeth Gaskell was the daughter of William Stevenson, but after her mother's early death was she brought up by her aunt in Knutsford, the town with which she will always be associated. She married the Reverend William Gaskell in 1832 and they lived in Manchester.
She died suddenly, during the course of a visit to Alton in Hampshire in 1865.
Her most famous works are Cranford, Mary Barton and her biography of her friend Charlotte Bronte.