English novelist, known for her thorough research, compassion toward her subjects, and skillful narrative style. She was born Elizabeth Stevenson in London. Her first novel was Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life (pub. anonymously in 1848), an attack on the behavior of factory employers during the 1840s, a time of depression and hardship for the British working class. The book won her the friendship of Charles Dickens, who requested a contribution to his new magazine, Household Words. Between 1851 and 1853 Gaskell contributed the papers later published under the title of Cranford (1853). This book, concerning elegant gentility among women in a country town, has become an English classic.
Gaskell's other works include a biography (1857) of her friend, the novelist Charlotte Brontë; and the novels and stories The Moorland Cottage (1850); Ruth (1853); North and South (1855), another compassionate study of conditions in Manchester; and the posthumously published Wives and Daughters (1866).