Winifred Gérin's biography of Mrs. Gaskell is based on a fresh examination of all available sources, and is the first to make full use of the mass of material that became available with the publication of the Letters in 1966.The result is a rich portrait. Mrs. Gaskell's literary career is fully explored, but she is also revealed as an admirable mother to her four daughters, a graceful and accomplished hostess, a dedicated socail worker, a great traveller, and a delightful correspondent, with a wide range of friends, including of course Charlotte Bronte, the subject of Mrs. Gaskell's great biography.
'She is like the best things in her books; full of generous and tender sympathies, of thoughtful kindness, of pleasant humour, of quick apprecation, of utmost simplicity and thruthfulness, and uniting with peculiar delicacy and refinement a strength of principle and purpose and straightforwardness of action, succh as few women possess.'
Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell