Private Voices: The Diaries of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and Sophia Holland - Hardcover

Chapple JAV; Chapple, J. A.; Wilson, Anita C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312164084 ISBN 13: 9780312164089

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1996

Synopsis

These two diaries, by the nineteenth-century novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and her cousin Sophia Holland, provide us with uniquely personal and revealing accounts of Victorian womanhood and motherhood. They record the first few years of life of Marianne (Elizabeth Gaskell's daughter) and Edward Thurstan (Sophia's son). This is the first critical edition of the Gaskell diary, previously published in a limited edition of only fifty copies in 1923, and the first ever publication of the Holland diary.
As a piece of social history, these diaries document the challenges, dilemmas and rewards of Victorian parenthood. As a piece of literature, there is no doubt that, in cultivating the powers of observation to be found in her diary, Elizabeth was laying the foundations for the wider social vision to be found in her novels.

About this title

About the Author

J A V Chapple is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0312164084
• ISBN 13: 9780312164089
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 125