His wife, Elizabeth Holland, came from a family established in Lancashire and Cheshire that was connected with other prominent Unitarian families, including the Wedgwoods, the Martineaus, the Turners and the Darwins.
That position did not materialise, however, and instead, Stevenson was nominated Keeper of the Treasury Records. Her father, William Stevenson, a Unitarian from Berwick-upon-Tweed, was minister at Failsworth, Lancashire, but resigned his orders on conscientious grounds he moved to London in 1806 with the intention of going to India after he was appointed private secretary to the Earl of Lauderdale, who was to become Governor General of India. She was the youngest of eight children only she and her brother John survived infancy. The doctor who delivered her was Dr Anthony Todd Thomson, and Thomson's sister Catherine later became Gaskell's stepmother. Gaskell was born Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson on 29 September 1810 in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, London, at the house that is now 93 Cheyne Walk. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–55), and Wives and Daughters (1865), all having been adapted for television by the BBC. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden.
Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë.
Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Her work is of interest to social historians as well as readers of literature. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell ( née Stevenson 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer.
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