Frederick Douglass: A Global Life

Posted on: March 23rd, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Inaugural Frederick Douglass Lecture – SOLD OUT

The Inaugural Frederick Douglass Lecture, presented in a partnership between the Manchester Lit & Phil, The University of Manchester and CARISMA.

Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, Bridgeford Street, Manchester M13 9PL

Context

In 2021, the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society (the Lit &Phil) commissioned independent research into Society members’ links with the transatlantic slave trade between 1780-1865. In response to the findings (published in 2023) and their wider present day societal implications, the Society committed to a series of actions to widen its reach and diversify its offering. One of those actions was to establish the Frederick Douglass Lecture series – to commemorate a leading, inspirational black abolitionist campaigner who, born into slavery, rose to become one of the leading social reformers of his time. He had close links to Manchester in the 1840s and to several prominent Lit & Phil abolitionist members. His contributions to political philosophy and human rights are enduring, not least in our continuing discussions today about racism, inequality and social justice. In honouring Douglass, we aim to recognise the complex and difficult legacies of the slave trade in British culture, celebrate those who fought against slavery and look forward, seeking ways to promote inclusivity, equality and respect for diversity within society at large.

“FREDERICK DOUGLASS – A GLOBAL LIFE“

Frederick Douglass was an international figure, not only because his writing took his words and his message across continents, but because he spent over 4 years of his life living travelling outside the United States. He first left the US in 1845 as a ‘fugitive slave’, travelling to Britain and Ireland to escape the possibility of recapture and re-enslavement. In 1859 he returned to Britain and on both trips gave powerful speeches against American slavery. In the 1880s, after the Civil War, Douglass again crossed the Atlantic to tour Europe and the Mediterranean and at the end of the same decade he lived and worked in the Republic of Haiti, as the US government’s Minister Resident and Consul General. It was during his four years outside the United States that Frederick Douglass became a free man. It was in Britain and Ireland that he developed as an orator and acquired the funds to start his first abolitionist newspaper – The North Star.

The 2026 Inaugural Frederick Douglass Lecture will be delivered by British Nigerian historian David Olusoga OBE, who is a BAFTA winning film-maker, author and Professor of Public History at The University of Manchester. Professor Olusoga explores how his time outside of the United States – in particular his years in England and Ireland – helped forge Frederick Douglass.

The event will be chaired by Professor Erinma Bell MBE.

An audience Q&A will follow the discussion.

David Olusoga OBE

David Olusoga OBE is a British Nigerian author, historian, presenter and BAFTA-winning film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at The University of Manchester and was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to history and community integration. He specialises in the British Empire and how we experience its lasting effects in modern society. David has presented historical television programmes on the BBC. His television credits include Civilisations, Black and British, Our NHS: A Hidden History, A House Through Time and the BAFTA award-winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners.

Professor Erinma Bell MBE DL

Professor Erinma Bell MBE DL is an Honorary Patron of the Lit & Phil and a Manchester-based academic and community peace practitioner with longstanding experience in conflict resolution, youth violence prevention, and community-centred social development. Professor Bell has contributed significantly to public dialogue on social justice, ethical leadership, and inclusive civic participation. Her involvement reflects the Series’ commitment to informed public engagement and to connecting historical enquiry with contemporary moral and social questions.

Creative Manchester

Creative Manchester is an interdisciplinary research platform based at The University of Manchester. The platform champions research in creativity and creative practice, bringing together research communities with external stakeholders to explore new research areas and address strategic opportunities. Please visit the website for more information Creative Manchester.

Register here to receive regular updates on upcoming Creative Manchester news, events and funding opportunities. You can also connect with Creative Manchester via our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

The Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society

Founded in 1781, the Manchester Lit & Phil is the oldest scientific and literary society in the UK outside London. Established to promote the advancement of knowledge through discussion and lectures, today the Lit & Phil continues its tradition of public engagement by offering regular talks and events across science, technology, philosophy, and the arts, serving as a forum for intellectual exchange in Manchester and beyond. The 2023 research report was produced by the University of Central Lancashire’s Black Atlantic Research Institute and can be read, alongside Erinma Bell’s response, at: https://www.manlitphil.ac.uk/read-watch-listen/the-manchester-literary-philosophical-society-and-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-1780-1865/

CARISMA

CARISMA (Community Alliance for Renewal Inner South Manchester Area) is a Manchester-based programme working to build safer, more inclusive and cohesive communities. It supports children, young people, adults and families through peacebuilding, community leadership, hate crime awareness, and inclusive wellbeing programmes. Its founder and and director, Professor Erinma Bell, will chair this event.

Accessibility

If you have particular access or dietary needs, please let us know in advance by providing details when registering for your ticket or by emailing creative@manchester.ac.uk

Manchester City Centre Peace Trail

Posted on: March 1st, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Curious about the hidden stories of peace in our city? Come along with Steve Roman, passionate peace activist and storyteller, as we wander through Manchester’s streets uncovering the remarkable Peace Trail. 

Meeting Point: Manchester Victoria Station, underneath the large, tiled map 

Duration: 2 hours 

Accessibility: It is suitable for people in wheelchairs. The route is paved and flat, apart from one slope. When we go through the Library there are lifts for those who need them. 

The Walk along the Peace Trail will bring alive Manchester’s radical history, its growth as the world’s first industrial city and its importance as a centre for peace, tolerance and promotion of social justice in the city and around the globe. 

Memorials and locations will gain new meanings as we learn about their peace history and the relevance for civil rights movements. What might we discover about our city’s evolving role—from industrial powerhouse to global advocate for justice and peace? Each stop invites us to see Manchester through fresh eyes. 

The walk will include the following themes / sites with perhaps some new perspectives: 

  • Migration and the movement of peoples 
  • Gandhi, Manchester Cathedral, the campaign against Chattel Slavery, and Abraham Lincoln 
  • John Dalton, the “Nuclear Timeline”, the Peace Garden, MAG (Mines Advisory Group) and the Nobel Peace Prize 
  • The Hidden Gem and religious tolerance, Free thinking and Science 
  • Elizabeth Raffald, Margaret Ashton, Erinma Bell, Lydia Becker, Suffragists and Suffragettes 
  • and, subject to time, Peterloo, the popular reform movement and Engels 

The guide is donating his fee to charity 

William Edward Armytage Axon

Posted on: February 9th, 2026 by Alan Wareham

A life against the odds

William Edward Armytage Axon, born 13th of January 1846, died 27th of December 1913, has been described as the busiest man in Manchester. He was a key figure in Victorian Manchester‘s intellectual life and an active member of The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

His papers, held in the John Rylands library, contain over 6600 letters covering a wide variety of subjects and include correspondence from major Victorian figures such as Walter Bagehot, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and CP Scott. It is said that he wrote or contributed to over 1000 books, articles and other publications.

His life story is surprising and inspirational in the sense that he achieved so much from an extremely disadvantaged start. Those achievements were against the odds, especially in the stratified Victorian society into which he was born.

He was the illegitimate child of Edward Armytage, a clothing manufacturer and a 15-year-old servant girl, Lydia Whitehead, in his employment. The young William was sent to foster parents in Manchester where he lived in poverty and was succumbing to the childhood illnesses that killed many a child in the city at that time. Fortunately for him and Manchester, his neighbours, the Axon family, took pity on him and adopted him into their own home. Although ill health prevented him from having a formal education, he was supported to learn by the daughters of the Axon family and via Sunday school, then the public libraries.

This informal education revealed that he had the ability to absorb huge amounts of information and take an interest in vast range of topics. In this way, this illegitimate child, born into poverty, who in most circumstances at the time would probably not have made it through to adulthood, became a well-known figure in Manchester literary life.

Axon worked as a librarian for Manchester libraries and for 30 years was on the literary staff of the Manchester Guardian, the forerunner of today’s Guardian newspaper. He was a vigorous public letter writer on all sorts of local and national issues. For example, he became involved in the debates around the historical subject matter of the murals being painted for Manchester town hall by Ford Maddox Brown. He wrote books and articles on a wide range of topics including literature, dialect, folklore, and history.

One of the books that he wrote, which gives an interesting insight into his eclectic mind, is The Mechanics Friend – collection of receipts and practical suggestions, published in 1875. This is, in effect, a DIY manual covering topics as diverse as glues, lacquers and locomotives. In it, Axon, who was usually more of a literary than practical man,  collected a huge amount of information to enable the Victorian DIY enthusiast to carry out many household tasks, including cutting a hinge, and, more esoterically, making a raft to rescue someone trapped on ice!

He noted prominently on the frontispiece of the book that he was a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, which perhaps indicates a belief that membership gave him authority on practical and scientific matters. Such an endorsement of the Society confirms that it was a well-known and respected institution in Victorian Manchester.

As well as being a prolific author, Axon was a social campaigner.  He was active in campaigns to open up public libraries in Manchester and Salford on Sundays. The idea of this was to allow working class people in the cities to have access to books and knowledge on Sundays, the only day they got off work. The public libraries had educated Axon, and he was keen to extend the opportunity to others from poor backgrounds.

He was also a leading light in the vegetarian movement, holding senior positions in the Vegetarian Society. That movement can trace its roots back to Manchester and Salford and Axon was a passionate early advocate for it. Similarly, he campaigned against tobacco and alcohol, being a member of the anti-tobacco and temperance leagues. These would not necessarily have been universally popular in a Victorian city like Manchester when concern about animal welfare was less common than it is today and tobacco, like a drink, would have been seen as one of the few outlets of pleasure for working people. However, Axon was an extremely principled man and worked throughout his life for various causes without regard to popularity. In addition to writing extensively on the subject, he went as far as to open up his own vegetarian bed and breakfast accommodation in Southport.

He was self-taught in most things and his sponge-like mind allowed him to learn numerous languages which also gave him access to yet further knowledge from other countries and cultures. His involvement in African American campaigns for equality resulted in him being awarded an honorary degree by Wilberforce University in the USA.

Notwithstanding his lack of formal education, his achievements propelled him into the Manchester and national intellectual establishment. He appears in a long list of learned and other societies including Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquaries, the English Dialect Society and, of course, the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. It is remarkable that in an era when most members of these institutions would have been drawn from the educated upper and middle classes, the illegitimate boy raised in poverty was invited to join. Today the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society is open to anyone, but in Axon’s time it, like others, required members to be elected. It is a tribute to his lifelong activity and prominence in numerous fields that he was elected to so many positions.

His contributions to the intellectual life of the city were eventually recognised by the University of Manchester, which conferred on him the honorary degree of Master of Arts shortly before his death in 1913. The University officials attended his home to confer the honour on him while he was on his sickbed, reflecting the esteem in which he was held.

Leaving aside his intellectual achievements and recognition by the establishment, it is indicative of the man that he kept in contact with his birth mother and her family, visiting them regularly. It is evident that he never forgot his roots.

For the illegitimate son of a 15-year-old servant girl, born into poverty and with no formal education, this member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society battled against the odds to achieve recognition, advocating for many causes and becoming a thought leader in the City. A Lit and Phil member to be proud of.

Lit&Phil Member – Andrew Welch

The Material City: Urban Air

Posted on: January 24th, 2026 by Alan Wareham

City air is full—full of buildings, birds, and more. Wind flows and shifts around skyscrapers; airborne pollution damages buildings and people; and machinery whirrs away to cool, heat, and filter the air in our offices and living spaces. This tour shows that, although air may be the most ephemeral element, its properties have influenced us and Manchester throughout history in ways we might not expect. Join us to explore a vanished hospital in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester’s alleys and their visible ventilation, old mills and their floating cotton fibres, and more.

The tour will start at the Queen Victoria statue at Piccadilly Gardens and end at Mayfield Park.

Charlotte will already be known to members from her talk ‘Magic, Science, and Spirit of Place in the Stones of Alderley Edge’ and her fascinating guided walk ‘Stone: An Historical Walking Tour of Manchester’, which opened our eyes to a number of our city’s corners to which we had previously paid no attention!

Practical Information

Booking is essential. We recommend logging into the website to make booking and paying for your ticket quicker and easier.

What’s in a Name?

Posted on: January 23rd, 2026 by Editor-Jo

How do we know Shakespeare was Shakespeare? Could a glover’s son who left school at fifteen really be the author behind such masterpieces as Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest?

Yes! says historian Susan Amussen. She transports readers back to early modern England, to travel the path that carried William Shakespeare from humble origins in Stratford to literary greatness on the London stage. This was a society undergoing rapid change. Grammar schools made education in Latin and Greek available to commoners, while touring players brought the latest dramatic productions to the masses. And in London, a metropolis filled with European visitors, ordinary people had the opportunity to see courtly life up close.

No serious historian doubts that Shakespeare was the author of the plays that bear his name. Susan Amussen shares what they know: that Shakespeare’s England was a complex and cosmopolitan place, with everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and furnish his imagination.

Practical Information

Booking is essential. Lit&Phil members: we recommend logging into the website to make booking your free member ticket quicker and easier.

Accessibility Information

The venue is wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Please contact us regarding any specific accessibility requirements you may have by emailing events@manlitphil.ac.uk

The Morphology of Modern Manchester

Posted on: December 12th, 2025 by Alan Wareham

In Britain, during the post-war period, many urban design professionals were architect-planners. A considerable proportion of these were employed by local authorities. A drive by the state to use legislation to control and influence the shape of development created a very specific set of political circumstances. Central government policy was filtered and interpreted by local government councillors and their officers and each town or city approached this in a different way. The legislation and the training enabled a very particular mode of urban design that was characterised by ambitious three-dimensional visions. Such ambition was also underpinned by non-statutory guidance that reflected the zeitgeist for vertical separation in urban settings, such as Sir Colin Buchanan’s Traffic in Towns.

In this talk, Richard Brook will examine Manchester as a case, through which to explore the nested tiers and networked relationships of government, governance and the private sector in the creation of new city space. Manchester’s 1945 Plan, directed by City Engineer and Surveyor, Rowland Nicholas, was one of the most comprehensive in Britain, yet it faltered due to a lack of capital, lack of statutory powers and lack of material resources. In the 1960s, Manchester’s first Chief Planner, John Millar, revisited the urban design of the entire central area with a team of talented young planners, recruited from the region. Their work was arguably greater in its scope and definition than that produced in 1945 and shaped the city for the next 50 years. Though only partially realised, the framework for development established in the mid-1960s and approved in 1968, set the tone for almost all the changes to follow for the next 50 years.

Now, as the palimpsestic traces of earlier visions are increasingly obscured by the pace of contemporary urbanisation, using rich visual material collected over the last three decades of research, Richard will position architectural histories alongside planning and urban histories. He will show how central government legislation was interpreted spatially by Manchester’s planners using drawings and models and how these visions continued to inform development well into the twenty-first century. In so doing, he will present an inverted archaeology of the city that traces the patterns established on paper and the long-term physical residue of these gestures.

Who Should Attend?

This talk is for anyone who cares about how Manchester came to look and work the way it does, curious residents, city enthusiasts, students, and professionals alike. You’ll enjoy it if you walk, cycle, drive or shop in the city centre and want to understand why streets, routes and buildings are arranged as they are. Community group members, councillors and people in planning, architecture, transport, heritage or development will get clear, visually rich insights into how past decisions still shape today’s city. No prior knowledge needed, just an interest in Manchester’s story and a desire to see familiar places with fresh eyes.

Practical Information

The talk includes a Q&A session.

Booking is essential. Lit&Phil members: we recommend logging into the website to make booking your free member ticket quicker and easier.

Accessibility Information

The venue is wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Please contact us regarding any specific accessibility requirements you may have by emailing events@manlitphil.ac.uk

A History of Pies and Puddings

Posted on: November 20th, 2025 by Editor-Jo

Food historian Neil Buttery (author of The Philosophy of Puddings and Knead to Know: A History of Baking) explores the history of some of our most beloved British foods: pies and puddings, from their origins on the top tables in medieval meals to the present day, where they are beloved by many (and treated with suspicion by some).

In the Middle Ages, Britain used to have a great tradition of baking huge pies – called coffyns and pasties – filled with whole joints of venison and wild boar. There were large luxurious mince pies too, filled with expensive exotics and plenty of meat, but these fancy pies all pale in comparison to the humongous and rather grotesque Yorkshire Christmas Pye of the Georgian era, filled with the bounties of the northern landowners sent by horse and carriage to their city friends.

The history of puddings is much more convoluted – the simple question of ‘what is a pudding?’ is a surprisingly difficult one to answer: black pudding, haggis, jam roly poly, steamed treacle sponge, trifle, ice cream – how can all of these be puddings? Then there is the added complication of any dessert or afters also called ‘pudding’. The pudding has gone through quite an evolution since its humble origins as a mixture of blood and fat boiled in intestines.

Neil will also present some of his research on regional foods: there’s a regional pudding associated with almost every region of England, why did such a proliferation of regional puddings occur and what does this tell us about the origins of some of our most beloved regional and national pies and puddings: Manchester pudding will, of course be represented, plus Yorkshire pudding (and the fact it’s not from Yorkshire), Cornish pasties (and the fact they’re not from Cornwall) and haggis (and the fact it’s not Scottish). Bombshells these may be – but they tell us much more about the social history of food and how foods become associated with particular places and quickly integrated into the cultural landscape of a region or country.

Refreshments (mulled wine, mince pies, tea, coffee and soft drinks) will be available for an additional cost. Please select the appropriate ticket type when making your booking.

The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Tour – 2

Posted on: September 6th, 2025 by Alan Wareham

Due to demand, we have arranged a second Manchester Literary and Philosophical Tour on 29th of September 2025

In 1781, just as Manchester was starting to become an industrial giant, with thunderous machines, canals packed with activity, brass works, iron foundries and coal mines, a group of local merchants and freethinkers founded the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society to debate ideas and attitudes. The growing metropolis would be a haven of thought as well as commerce. The Lit & Phil has since nurtured the city’s writing and debating.

Ed Glinert, Manchester’s most prolific tour guide, has devised an ingenious guided tour linking the great literary stories of Manchester with places and events that saw new ways of thinking influencing society. The tour begins outside the Lit & Phil’s traditional home, 36 George Street, Chinatown, the building where John Dalton devised atomic theory in 1803, no longer standing, and takes in a host of key sites:

  • The Portico Library, to hear about the glorious flights of fancy of Thomas de Quincey.
  • Central Library, built to resemble the Pantheon – of London.
  • The Free Trade Hall, the only building in England “dedicated to a proposition” (A. J. P. Taylor).
  • The Hidden Gem Church. Why was Catholicism banned in England for more than two hundred years?
  • The former Swedenborgian church, dedicated to one of the most influential thinkers of the 18th century.
  • The Chartist Plaque.
  • Cross Street Chapel (the Lit & Phil’s first home.)
  • Other relevant sites, and ends at the Wellington Inn, 18th century birthplace of John Byrom, the first Mancunian to be invited to join the Royal Society, who founded the Kabbalah Club to discuss the numerical pattern of the universe.

Location

6pm – Tour Begins:
36 George St, Manchester, M1 4HA

8pm – Tour Ends:
4 Cathedral Gates, Greater, Manchester M3 1SW

The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Tour

Posted on: August 28th, 2025 by Alan Wareham

In 1781, just as Manchester was starting to become an industrial giant, with thunderous machines, canals packed with activity, brass works, iron foundries and coal mines, a group of local merchants and freethinkers founded the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society to debate ideas and attitudes. The growing metropolis would be a haven of thought as well as commerce. The Lit & Phil has since nurtured the city’s writing and debating.

Ed Glinert, Manchester’s most prolific tour guide, has devised an ingenious guided tour linking the great literary stories of Manchester with places and events that saw new ways of thinking influencing society. The tour begins outside the Lit & Phil’s traditional home, 36 George Street, Chinatown, the building where John Dalton devised atomic theory in 1803, no longer standing, and takes in a host of key sites:

  • The Portico Library, to hear about the glorious flights of fancy of Thomas de Quincey.
  • Central Library, built to resemble the Pantheon – of London.
  • The Free Trade Hall, the only building in England “dedicated to a proposition” (A. J. P. Taylor).
  • The Hidden Gem Church. Why was Catholicism banned in England for more than two hundred years?
  • The former Swedenborgian church, dedicated to one of the most influential thinkers of the 18th century.
  • The Chartist Plaque.
  • Cross Street Chapel (the Lit & Phil’s first home.)
  • Other relevant sites, and ends at the Wellington Inn, 18th century birthplace of John Byrom, the first Mancunian to be invited to join the Royal Society, who founded the Kabbalah Club to discuss the numerical pattern of the universe.

Location

6pm – Tour Begins:
36 George St, Manchester, M1 4HA

8pm – Tour Ends:
4 Cathedral Gates, Greater, Manchester M3 1SW

Elizabeth Gaskell

Posted on: August 15th, 2025 by Alan Wareham

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 – 1865): Weaving Stories of Society and Spirit

The celebrated author Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell lived at 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester with her husband the Reverend William Gaskell and their family from 1850 until her death in 1865. Plymouth Grove is a large house, which at that time was set amongst beautiful rolling fields. It is now open to the public and home to the Elizabeth Gaskell Society.

Born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson in London in 1810, a year later, on the death of her mother, Elizabeth was taken to live in Knutsford, Cheshire, with her aunt, Hannah Lumb. The arrangement was a happy one – she was to refer to her aunt as ‘my more than mother’ and was to use Knutsford as the inspiration for her fictitious town of Cranford. Knutsford also became ‘Hollingford’ in her novel Wives and Daughters. After leaving school in 1826, the young Elizabeth returned to Chelsea to live with her father and his second wife. Her father died in 1829, and the network of Unitarians provided her with a new base, at the home of the Reverend William Turner in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. In 1831 she met the Reverend William Gaskell, then a junior minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester and the following year they were married.

So it was that, in 1832, Elizabeth Gaskell found herself newly married and living in the great industrial city of Manchester, also known as ‘Cottonopolis’ after the trade that created its wealth. Like her husband, she was a Unitarian through and through, and her religion was direct, scripture based and, above all, practical. She believed in doing any good that was possible in her immediate environment, and she was possessed of a strong sense of duty. This was one of the common bonds that made her a friend to another famous writer of the period, Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she was to write in 1857, at the request of Charlotte’s father, Patrick.

For the first 16 years of her married life, Elizabeth Gaskell bore several children: while four daughters survived, her first child was still born and her only son, William, died at ten months of scarlet fever. As a distraction from her grief, her husband suggested that she write a novel. It was out of this sorrow that her first novel Mary Barton was born. The novel scandalised much of Victorian society, partly through its unflinching account of the grim realities of life in the newly industrialised cities, but also because its sympathies lay so squarely with the workers in relation to their employers.

Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848, as was common for many novels of the time, particularly by women authors. Mary Barton had a great impact on the reading public and was widely reviewed and discussed. The anonymity of the author was not to last however, and once her name was known she found herself courted by London’s literary elite becoming friendly with Carlyle and Dickens – who pressed her into writing for his periodical Household Words – and meeting Charlotte Bronte for the first time. She later published as Mrs Gaskell.

Despite the success of Mary Barton, it was not until 1855 that she produced the companion volume North and South. In between publishing these two novels, she contributed many stories to Household Words, including episodes of one of her best-known novels, Cranford. After the death of Charlotte Bronte in 1855 Elizabeth Gaskell wrote what has been described as the first modern biography, The Life of Charlotte Bronte.

She continued with her stories for Dickens, and other works include Ruth (1853) My Lady Ludlow (1858), Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), Cousin Phillis (1864) and Wives and Daughters (1866).

Elizabeth’s diary and her many wonderful letters, show her as a conscientious mother, deeply concerned about her family. She and her husband worked amongst the poor of Manchester during a period of great social change. They also enjoyed a thriving professional circle of friends. William co-founded the Unitarian College in Manchester, was Chairman of the Portico Library, Manchester and on the committee of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

She was a prolific writer, a volunteer teacher and charity worker, a traveller at home and abroad (usually with a daughter, but without William) and a very sociable woman. She would mix happily with people of all types, and she used her experiences in her writing. She seems to have been a charming, but independent-minded woman. Her enterprise is shown in the fact that she bought a large house in Hampshire, without William’s knowledge, as a surprise present for him and as security for her daughters.

Elizabeth’s writing is remarkably varied and includes almost forty short stories, ranging from social realism to ghost stories. Her novel Cranford has never been out of print. Her final novel Wives and Daughters was left unfinished when she died suddenly of heart failure on 12th November 1865 aged just 55.

Although described by the press after her death as ‘one of the greatest female novelists of all time’, Elizabeth Gaskell’s literary fame faded in the early twentieth century and for some she still remains in the shadow of her contemporaries, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens.

Over the last 30 years we have thankfully seen a resurgence in her popularity as new readers discover and enjoy her stories. She is now read and studied across the world with her novels and short stories translated into many languages.

Many people have also been introduced to Elizabeth Gaskell via the different television adaptations of her works, which continue to entertain and enthral us!

The John Ryland’s Library in Manchester holds the world’s most important collection of literary manuscripts by Elizabeth Gaskell, including the only complete manuscript of Wives and Daughters and her celebrated biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë.

Debbie Pine, member of Manchester Lit & Phil

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