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Unknown recipient 1856: ‘I would not trust a mouse to a woman if a man’s judgment was to be had. Women have no judgement. They have tact, and sensitiveness and genius…’ #gaskelleveryday

Parthenope Nightingale 1854: ‘…in some odd leisure ¼ of an hour would you mind writing a little about what I am so greedy to know. I pick up all the scraps I can out of newspapers; but they only whet my hunger’ #gaskelleveryday

To Maria James 1851: ‘Mr. Gaskell and I want to congratulate Mr. James on his appointment as master in Chancery; though what that mysterious office may be…I know as much of as I know of the Grand Llama’ #gaskelleveryday

To John Forster 1852: ‘We dined quietly with Mrs. Wordsworth this morning. She is charming’ #gaskelleveryday

To R. Monckton Milnes Oct 29 1853: "With skilful diplomacy, for which I admire myself extremely, I have obtained the address we want"#gaskelleveryday

To Harriet Martineau on Adam Bede and Janet’s Repentences 1859: ‘I have stuck out that a man wrote them.. I had rather they had not been written by Miss Evans…but justice must be done to all; and after all the writing... should raise her in everyone’s opinion’ #gaskelleveryday

To Mary Carpenter, re: a publication by H. Martineau, thought to affirm Atheism and Materialism: ‘I don’t quite understand the domestic politics of these vallies; but Mrs. Fletcher and Mrs. Davy have thought it right to decline intercourse with Miss Martineau’ #gaskelleveryday

To George Smith 1855: ‘The Professor’ Mr. Nicholls would not allow me to see, saying that whole pages of it had been embodied in ‘Villette’ #gaskelleveryday

To Marianne 1851: ‘I hear that a new housemaid whom I have engaged is coming (from Stamford in Lincolnshire) the day after tomorrow, and I must write untold of directions home about things, as the servants don’t expect her’ #gaskelleveryday

To L Hachette 1855: I had a message... that translations of my works had already appeared in the ‘Bibliothéque du Chemin du fer’[sic]. If there should be any money owing…the friend who will convey to you the numbers of Household Words is authorized to receive it #gaskelleveryday

Meta to Charles E. Norton about Marianne’s flirtation with Catholicism: ‘Our fears about her have almost past….she re-entered her home life, the excitement died a natural death; and now I really believe that her thoughts hardly ever revert to Roman Catholicism’ #gaskelleveryday

To Marianne form 106 Haupt Strasse 1858: ‘It seems always to be me to write; but…the others, Meta especially do work pretty hard at their German; and that we have more people popping in and out than we expected #gaskelleveryday

To Ellen Nussey 1855: ‘it is my busiest time of the year, and our house has been and is, almost fuller than it will hold of company, for whose amusement and entertainment I have to plan each day’ #gaskelleveryday

To Parthenope Nightingale, 1854: ‘You can’t think how generous I feel myself in giving you a whole sheet of paper, when I have only two left’ #gaskelleveryday

To Mary Green 1855: ‘I thought I had a piece of quiet before me; but then came a letter from Mrs. Chapman the Anti-Slavery Mrs. C. volunteering a visit that afternoon to stay till today’ #gaskelleveryday

To Marianne 1859: ‘I shall never be wise enough in a tête a tête with a girl who does not read poetry and novels but Adam Smith and Niall etc. & ‘and has no sense of humour but takes everything literally’ #gaskelleveryday

To Verlag B. Tauchnitz 1862: ‘ I cannot help wishing that sometime or other you would collect Cranford out of Household Words, and publish it in your series’ #gaskelleveryday

To Anne Holland from Lea Hurst, the Nightingales’ house near Matlock: ‘I did not know Derbyshire before. It is beautiful as distinct from wild or grand’ #gaskelleveryday

"Marriage would be very nice... I shouldn’t mind being a bride, if I could be one without having a husband." Bathsheba, Far From the Madding Crowd.
Discuss. Join our study sessions - we start October 28 https://gaskellsociety.co.uk/thomas-hardy-and-elizabeth-gaskell/

From Marianne to Charles Eliot Norton 1859: ‘I hope Mama and Meta will go to Whitby next week for a fortnight or so-Mama is much better than she has been for a long time but I want her not to be in Manchester in November’ #gaskelleveryday

To Marianne from Lea Hurst 1854: ‘I have done little but write all day & and it is now near 5, and I must go out. I have very little news to tell anyone’ #gaskelleveryday

To Samuel Holland ? 1857: ‘tell us when there is a chance of you & Annie coming to see us. Would any time in November do? We shall have some good concerts in that month’ #gaskelleveryday

To Charles Bosanquet 1863:‘most our days being spent from 9AM to7-30PM in the Sewing –Schools. We were all so knocked up by this extra duty’ #gaskelleveryday

At Sea-Scale, Whitehaven 1857: ‘…it is a blusterous place…(We have had to wear a pair of drawers for a dressing gown , owing to Hearn’s queer packing up’ #gaskelleveryday

To Marianne from Catherine Winkworth’s in Southport 1848: ‘I often wish for you here to run up and down these steep stairs for me; they are very tiring’ #gaskelleveryday

To Lady Kay-Shuttleworth about introduction of nurseries 1850: If I did not know how averse working people are to anything new, I should be disheartened by the vast number of objections they raise’ #gaskelleveryday

To William Turner, 1832: ‘I have been so completely in a “whirl” that I feel I can hardly arrange my thoughts…Mr. Gaskell has promised as soon as the formal bridal calls have been made, to go with me and introduce me to most of the families under his care’ #gaskelleveryday

Don’t forget the torn piece of envelope. No run-of-the-mill scrap of paper and a personal favourite of ours.

Oh my gosh, this is beautiful. Powerful too!