Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and Adoption

Portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell by George Richmond (1851)
Source: Wikipedia.org.

Biography

1810-1865

Gaskell's mother died before she was one month old, and she was raised partly by an aunt, but her childhood was spent in a succession of families rather than with her father.

She was a friend and biographer of Charlotte Brontë and is reckoned one of the best English novelists of the nineteenth century.

References

Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, 1993-97 Dictionary of National Biography Matsuoka, Mitsuharo. "The Gaskell Web." [Includes portraits]. Available at: lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Gaskell.html