Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was a British novelist, biographer, and social reformer whose work bridges the worlds of Victorian domestic fiction and industrial realism. Best known for novels such as Mary Barton, Cranford, and North and South, she brought a rare moral clarity and emotional intelligence to stories of class conflict, gender roles, and social change. A friend to both Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell remains one of the most perceptive chroniclers of 19th-century England.
