Editing Elizabeth Gaskell (section)

==Reputation and re-evaluation==
Mrs. Gaskell's reputation from her death to the 1950s was epitomised by [[Lord David Cecil]]'s assessment in ''Early Victorian Novelists'' (1934) that she was "all woman" and "makes a creditable effort to overcome her natural deficiencies but all in vain" (quoted in Stoneman, 1987, from Cecil, p.&nbsp;235). A scathing unsigned  [[review]] of ''North and South'' in ''[[The Leader (English newspaper)|The Leader]]'' accused Gaskell of making errors about Lancashire which a resident of Manchester would not make and said that a woman (or clergymen and women) could not "understand industrial problems", would "know too little about the [[cotton industry]]" and had no "right to add to the confusion by writing about it".<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Chapman|editor-first=Alison|title=Elizabeth Gaskell: Mary Barton North and South|year=1999|publisher=Icon Books|location=Duxford|isbn=9781840460377}}</ref>

Mrs. Gaskell's novels, with the exception of ''Cranford'', gradually slipped into obscurity during the late 19th century; before 1950, she was dismissed as a minor author with good judgment and "feminine" sensibilities. Archie Stanton Whitfield said her work was "like a nosegay of violets, honeysuckle, lavender, mignonette and sweet briar" in 1929.<ref>{{cite book|last=Whitfield|first=Archie Stanton|title=Mrs. Gaskell, Her Life and Works|year=1929|publisher=G. Routledge & sons|page=258}}</ref> Cecil (1934) said that she lacked the "masculinity" necessary to properly deal with social problems (Chapman, 1999, pp.&nbsp;39–40).

However, the critical tide began to turn in Mrs. Gaskell's favour when, in the 1950s and 1960s, socialist critics like [[Kathleen Mary Tillotson|Kathleen Tillotson]], [[Arnold Kettle]] and [[Raymond Williams]] re-evaluated the description of social and industrial problems in her novels (see Moore, 1999<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=2466&NLID=166 |title=Drury University: Victorian Age Literature, Marxism, and Labor Movement |access-date=2012-06-14 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100601222956/http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=2466&NLID=166 |archive-date=1 June 2010 |df=dmy-all }}</ref> for an elaboration), and—realising that her vision went against the prevailing views of the time—saw it as preparing the way for vocal [[feminist movement]]s.<ref>Stoneman, Patsy (1987). Elizabeth Gaskell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. {{ISBN|9780253301031}}, p. 3.</ref>
In the early 21st century, with Mrs. Gaskell's work "enlisted in contemporary negotiations of nationhood as well as gender and class identities",<ref>{{cite book|editor-last=Matus|editor-first=Jill L.|title=The Cambridge companion to Elizabeth Gaskell|year=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, UK|isbn=9780521846769|edition=repr.}}, p. 9.</ref> ''North and South'' – one of the first industrial novels describing the conflict between employers and workers – was recognized as depicting complex social conflicts and offering more satisfactory solutions through Margaret Hale: spokesperson for the author and Gaskell's most mature creation.<ref>Pearl L. Brown. "From Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton To Her North And South: Progress Or Decline For Women?" ''Victorian Literature and Culture'', 28, pp. 345–358.</ref>

In her introduction to ''The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell'' (2007), a collection of essays representing the current Gaskell scholarship, Jill L. Matus stresses the author's growing stature in Victorian literary studies and how her innovative, versatile storytelling addressed the rapid changes during her lifetime.{{cn|date=September 2022}}