First published in 1977, this book explores biography in the post-Renaissance period and investigates some of the problems implicit in this literary form. The introduction considers various aspects of biographical theory as expressed by practitioners and critics. The rest of the book is a detailed examination of specific works placed in chronological context - reflecting the author's assertion that a work of biography is inseparable from the intellectual and cultural precepts of its age. Amongst the works examined are: Plutarch's Lives, Aubrey's Brief Lives, Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Johnson's Life of Savage. This book will be of interest to students of literature and cultural history.

First published in 1977, this book explores biography in the post-Renaissance period and investigates some of the problems implicit in this literary form. The introduction considers various aspects of biographical theory as expressed by practitioners and critics. The rest of the book is a detailed examination of specific works placed in chronological context - reflecting the author's assertion that a work of biography is inseparable from the intellectual and cultural precepts of its age. Amongst the works examined are: Plutarch's Lives, Aubrey's Brief Lives, Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Johnson's Life of Savage. This book will be of interest to students of literature and cultural history.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

A selection of texts by Elizabeth Gaskell, accompanied by annotations. It brings together Gaskell academics to provide readers with scholarship on her work and seeks to bring the crusading spirit and genius of the writer into the 21st century to take her place as a major Victorian writer.

This Norton Critical Edition of her best-selling novel is annotated and edited by preeminent Gaskell scholar Alan Shelston. "Contexts" includes contemporary reviews and correspondence related to North and South, along with the full text of Gaskell s 1850 short story "Lizzie Leigh," which, like North and South, is set in industrial Manchester and deals with strong working women. This topic is further addressed in Bessie Rayner Parkes s essay on Victorian working women. "Criticism" collects eleven assessments of the novel, among them Louis Cazamian s 1904 study of industrial fiction and Hilary Schor s recent study of North and South in the context of discourse analysis. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."

Ranking alongside Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot as one of the great Victorian authoresses, Elizabeth Gaskell is now chiefly remembered for penning the radical novel North and South, and Cranford, recently adapted by the BBC. She was also a regular contributor to Dickens' periodicals. Highly influential among her peers, Gaskell forged friendships with contemporary authors, most famously perhaps with Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote, producing a work that is still regarded as one of the finest examples of life-writing. Famed for her adeptness at capturing local dialect and the voices of middle-class characters, Gaskell skilfully imbued all her writing with a sense of the intimate and everyday. Due to her prolific letter-writing, records remain of her own daily experiences and thoughts. In this new biography, Alan Shelston, founder of The Gaskell Society Journal, sheds light on the life of the woman behind the writing: her literary successes, and also her marriage and humanitarian work.

Contains number of previously unpublished letters which were not included in the hardback edition. Completes the project of publishing the correspondence of one of the greatest nineteeth-century novelists - J. A. V. Chapple edited not only the letters of Elizabeth Gaskell (1966), but also published Elizabeth Gaskell: The early years in 1997. The influence and appreciation of Mrs Gaskell is undergoing a renaissance, with the recent BBC adaptation of Wives and Daughters and the forthcoming North and South. The authors are two of the acknowledged world experts on Elizabeth Gaskell - both of whom have helped the BBC in compiling the 1999 Omnibus programme.. This collection illustrates once more the richness and diversity of her involvement in a remarkable range of social and literary activities, making her letters an important source for scholars of Victorian literature and culture 6. Includes correspondence. -- .

The most important writings by the great and controversial Victorian polemicist. Carlyle was one of the great figures of his age: thunderous, passionate, irascible, sceptical and idealistic. This selection is representative of all stages of Carlyle's career, and includes 'Sign of the Times', his essay against the mechanization of the age and the rise of the machines; the whole of 'Chartism'; and extracts from The French Revolution, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, as well as other pieces. The book also includes an introduction and notes by Alan Shelston. Thomas Carlyle was born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1795. Intended by his family to become a Presbyterian minister, he was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment while at the University of Edinburgh and became a teacher instead. He later turned to literary work, publishing a life of Schiller and translations of Goethe in the 1820s. His first truly successful book was The French Revolution, which was followed by many others. He died in 1881. Alan Shelston was Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester until retirement in 2002. He has edited a number of Gaskell's works including The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1975) and North and South (2005), and was joint editor with John Chapple of The Further Letters of Mrs Gaskell (2000). He has published a selection of Hardy's poetry and written on a number of nineteen century authors including Dickens and Henry James.