Gaskell, Elizabeth: - Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was a Victorian novelist and short story writer born in London. She became a first-hand witness to the difficult circumstances of labourers in the North after marrying a Manchester preacher. Her best-known works are a social novel North and South (1854), a tale about industrialisation, as well as an episodic novel Cranford set in a fictional town modelled on Gaskell's childhood setting. Both works were published in Dickens's periodical Household Words. Gaskell was also one of the first female biographers as she wrote about the life and works of Charlotte Brönte.