Elizabeth Gaskell’s Radical Manchester at Portico Library and Gaskell House
Creative Tourist
Although taking on the stereotypical traditional roles of wife, mother, supporter of her husband’s work and manager of a household, Elizabeth Gaskell was a radical woman of her time. We see this in the themes running through her books – single women, poverty, class, employer/employee relations and industrial Manchester – but her personal life also shows that she thought and acted in ways different to many women in the nineteenth century.
This tour will bring out Gaskell’s radical approach to life by visiting the Portico Library then travelling by bus to Elizabeth Gaskell’s House in Plymouth Grove, where she lived for fifteen years and where she wrote many of her novels. Here you will learn more about her life, and about some of the other radical women she met. The event finishes with some delicious tea and homemade cake!
