Elizabeth Gaskell - Early Life

Early Life

Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on 29 September 1810, at 93 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. She was the youngest of eight children; only she and her brother John survived infancy. Her father, William Stevenson, was a Scottish Unitarian minister at Failsworth, Lancashire but resigned his orders on conscientious grounds and moved to London in 1806 with intention of going to India after he was appointed private secretary to the Earl of Lauderdale, who was to become Governor-General of India. This position did not materialise, and Stevenson was nominated Keeper of the Treasury Records. His wife, Elizabeth Holland, came from a family from the English Midlands that was well connected with other Unitarian and prominent families like the Wedgwoods, the Turners and the Darwins, and when she died 13 months after giving birth to her youngest daughter, she left a bewildered husband who saw no alternative for Elizabeth but to be sent to live with her mother's sister, Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire.

While she was growing up her future was uncertain as she had no personal wealth and no firm home, even though she was a permanent guest at her aunt and grandparents' house. Her father married Catherine Thomson in 1814 and they had a son, William (born 1815) and a daughter, Catherine (born 1816). Although Elizabeth spent several years without seeing her father and his new family, her older brother John often visited her in Knutsford. John was destined for the Royal Navy from an early age like his grandfathers and uncles, but he had no entry and had to join the Merchant Navy with the East India Company's fleet. John went missing in 1827 during an expedition to India.

Much of Elizabeth's childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with her aunt Hannah Lumb in Knutsford, a town she immortalised as Cranford. They lived in a large, red brick house called Heathwaite, on Heathside (now Gaskell Avenue), which faces the large open area of Knutsford Heath. From 1821 to 1826 she attended a school run by the Miss Byerlys at Barford House, and after that Avonbank in Stratford-on-Avon where she received a traditional education in arts, the classics, decorum and propriety given to young ladies at the time. Her aunts gave her the classics to read, and she was encouraged by her father in her studies and writing. Her brother John sent her modern books and descriptions of his life at sea and his experiences abroad.

After leaving school aged 16, she travelled to London to spend time with her Holland cousins. She spent some time in Newcastle upon Tyne (with the Rev William Turner's family) and in Edinburgh. Her stepmother's brother was the miniature artist, William John Thomson, who painted the 1832 portrait of Gaskell in Manchester. A bust of Gaskell was sculpted by David Dunbar at the same time.