CHAPTER XVI

Mrs. Gaskell

Ever since Eve gave Adam of the forbidden fruit, "and he did eat," the relative position of the sexes has rankled in the heart of man. The sons of Adam proclaim loudly that they were given dominion over the earth and all that the earth contained; but they have been ever ready to follow blindly the beckoning finger of some fair daughter of Eve. Perhaps it is a consciousness of this domination of the weaker sex that has led man to proclaim in such loud tones his mastery over woman, having some doubts of its being recognised by her unless asserted in bold language. At a time when the novels of women received as warm a welcome from the public and as large checks from the publishers as those of men, a writer whose sex need not be given thus discussed their relative merits:

"What is woman, regarded as a literary worker? Simply an inferior animal, educated as an inferior animal. And what is man? He is a superior being, educated by a superior being. So how can they ever be equal in that particular line?"

Granted the premises, there can be but one conclusion.

The perfect assurance with which men have asserted their own sufficiency in all lines of art would be amusing if it had not been so disastrous in distorting and warping at least three of them: music, the drama, and prose fiction. As slow as the growth of spirituality, has been the recognition of woman's mental and moral power. It seems almost incredible that not many years ago only male voices were heard in places of amusement. Deep, rich, full, and sonorous, no one disputes the beauty of the male chorus; but modern opera would be impossible without the soprano and alto voices, and Madame Patti, Madame Sembrich, and Madame Lehman have proved that in natural gifts and in the technique of art women are not inferior to their brethren.

By the same slow process women have won recognition on the stage. Even in Shakespeare's time men saw no reason why women should acquire the histrionic art. Imagine Juliet played by a boy! Yet Essex, Leicester, Southampton, in the boxes, the groundlings in the pit, and Ben Jonson sitting as critic of all, were well satisfied with it, for they were used to it, just as men have accepted the heroines of their own novels, though every woman they meet is a refutation of their truth. It only needed a woman in a woman's part to open the eyes of the audience to all they had missed before. Not until the Restoration, did any woman appear on the English stage. The following lines given in the prologue written for the revival of _Othello_, in which the part of Desdemona was acted for the first time by a woman, show how quick critics were to see the folly of the old custom:

For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen, With bone so large, and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter Giant.

As we cannot conceive of the English stage without such women as Mrs. Siddons, Charlotte Cushman, and Ellen Terry, so we cannot conceive of the English novel without such writers as Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Mary Mitford, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot, each one of whom carried some phase of the novel to so high a point that she has stood pre-eminent in her own particular line. Too often we confuse art with its subject-matter. If it requires as much skill to give interest to the everyday occurrences of the home as to the thrilling adventures abroad; to depict the life of women as the life of men; to reveal the joys and sorrows of a woman's heart as the exultations and griefs of man's; then these women deserve a place equal to that held by Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray. Their art, as their subject-matter, is different. With the exception of George Eliot, they have not virility with its strength and power, but they have femininity, no less strong and powerful, a quality possessed by Scott, but by no other of these masculine writers, with the possible exception of Dickens, and in him it is a femininity, which tends to run to sentimentalism, a different characteristic.

* * * * *

Elizabeth Gaskell, one of the most feminine of writers, is so well known as the author of _Cranford_, that delightful village whose only gentleman dies early in the story, that many of its readers do not know that its author was better known by her contemporaries through her humanitarian novels; in which she discussed the great problems that face the poor.

Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Stevenson, was born in Chelsea in 1810. She spent the greater part of her childhood and girlhood at the home of her mother's family, Knutsford in Cheshire, the place she afterward made famous under the name of Cranford. In 1832, she married the Reverend William Gaskell, minister of the Unitarian chapel in Manchester, and that city became her home. She took an active interest in all the affairs of the city, and constantly visited the poor. Her husband's father, besides being the professor of English History and Literature in Manchester New College, a Unitarian institution, was a manufacturer; thus Mrs. Gaskell had the opportunity of hearing both sides of the controversy which was then waging between labour and capital.

In the early forties, there was much suffering among the "mill-hands"; many were dying of starvation, and consequently there were many strikes and uprisings. These conditions led to her writing her first novel, _Mary Barton_. The book was written during the years 1845-1847, although it was not published until 1848. The nucleus of it, Mrs. Gaskell wrote to a friend, was John Barton. Since she herself was constantly wondering at the inequalities of fortune, which permitted some to starve, while others had abundance, how must it affect an ignorant man, himself on the verge of starvation, and filled with pity for the sufferings of his friends? Driven almost insane by the condition of society, and hoping to remedy it, he commits a crime, which preys so upon his conscience that it finally wears out his own life.

Mrs. Gaskell in this, her first novel, has left an undying picture of that section of smoky Manchester where the mill-workers live: its narrow lanes; small but not uncomfortable cottages, well supplied with furniture in days when work was plentiful, but destitute even of a fire when it was scarce; the undersized men and women, with irregular features, pale blue eyes, sallow complexions, but with an intelligence rendered quick and sharp by their life among the machinery, and by their hard struggle for existence. The life of the poor had often furnished a theme for the poets, but it was the life of shepherds and milkmaids, above whom the blue sky arched, and whose labours were brightened by the songs of the birds, and the colours and sweet odours of fruit and flowers. But Mrs. Gaskell described the life of the poor in a town where factory smoke obscured the light of the sun, and where the weariness of labour was rendered more intense by the clanging factory bell, and the constant whirr of machinery ringing in their ears. It is a gloomy picture, but no gloomier than the reality.

Disraeli in _Sybil_ discussed the questions of labour and capital in their relations to the history of England, with a broad intellectual grasp of the sociological causes which produced these conditions. He wrote in the interests of two classes, the Crown and the People, with the hope that England might again have a free monarchy and a prosperous people. It is a well illustrated treatise on government, but the principles advocated or discussed always overshadow the characters. He had no such intimate knowledge of the lives of the poor as had Mrs. Gaskell. She conducts us to the homes of John Barton, George Wilson, and Job Legh, shows the simplicity of their lives, and their sense of the injustice under which they are suffering, and their helpfulness to each other in times of need.

How simple and true is the friendship that binds Mary Barton, the dressmaker's apprentice; Margaret, the blind singer; and Alice Wilson, the aged laundress, whose mind is constantly dwelling on the green fields and running brooks of her childhood's home. These women possess the strength of character of the early Teutonic women. They are reticent, not given to the exchange of confidences, but ready to help a friend with all they have in the hour of need. When Margaret thinks that the Bartons are in want of money, she says to Mary, "Remember, if you're sore pressed for money, we shall take it very unkind if you do not let us know." But she does not question her. Later when her great trouble comes to Mary Barton, which she must bear alone, when she must free a lover from the charge of murder without incriminating her father, she shows presence of mind, clearness of vision, and both moral and physical courage.

Jem Wilson, the hero of the story, is as strong as Mary Barton, the heroine. Although Dickens was writing of the poor, he always found some means to educate his heroes, and generally placed them among gentlemen. Jem Wilson's education was received in the factory, and the little rise he made above his fellows was due to his better understanding of machinery. He was a working man, proud of his skill, and of his good name for honesty and sobriety.

The plot of _Mary Barton_ is highly melodramatic, and its technique is open to criticism. It should not be read, however, for the story, but for the many home scenes in which we come into close sympathy with the men and women of Manchester. There is no novel in which we feel more strongly the heart-beats of humanity. It leaves the impression, not of art, but of life.

Mrs. Gaskell turned again to the struggles between labour and capital for the plot of her novel _North and South_. Between this story and _Mary Barton_ she had written _Cranford_ and _Ruth_, but her mind seemed to revert, as it were, from the peaceful village life to the stirring mill-towns of Lancashire. The great contrast between life in the counties of England presided over by the landed gentry, and that in the counties where the manufacturers formed the aristocracy, suggested this book. It was published in 1855, seven years after _Mary Barton_. The plot of _North and South_ is better proportioned than is that of _Mary Barton_. There are fewer characters, better contrasted. It is a brighter picture, with more humour, but it does not leave so strong an impression on the mind as does the earlier work. Both, however, are more accurate than _Hard Times_, a book with which Dickens himself was highly dissatisfied. He knew little of the life in the manufacturing districts, but, in a spirit of indignation at the poverty brought on by grasping manufacturers, he caricatured the entire class in the persons of Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. When these men are compared with the manufacturers as represented in _North and South_, Mrs. Gaskell's more intimate knowledge of them is at once apparent.

Mrs. Gaskell had been accused of taking sides with the working men, and representing their point of view in _Mary Barton_. In _North and South_, the hero, Mr. Thornton, is a rich manufacturer, a fine type of the self-made man, but standing squarely on his right to do what he pleases in his own factory. "He looks like a person who would enjoy battling with every adverse thing he could meet with--enemies, winds, or circumstances," was Margaret Hale's comment when she first met him. "He's worth fighting wi', is John Thornton," said one of the leaders of the strike. For although the condition of affairs in the mill-towns had much improved since John Barton went to London as a delegate from his starving townsmen, and was refused a hearing by Parliament, a large part of the book is concerned with the story of a strike, which in its outcome brought starvation to many of the men, and bankruptcy to some of the masters, the acknowledged victors.

Higgins, one of the leaders of the working men, is a true Lancashire man, and like Thornton, the leader of the masters, has many traits of character as truly American as English. His sturdy independence is well shown in Margaret's first interview with him. The daughter of a vicar in the south of England, she had been accustomed to call upon the poor in her father's parish. Learning that Higgins's daughter, Bessy, is ill she expresses her desire to call upon her. "I'm none so fond of having stranger folk in my house," Higgins informs her, but he finally relents and says, "Yo may come if yo like."

But besides the conflict between the manufacturers and their employees, with which much of the book is concerned, there is the sharp contrast between the Hales, born and bred in the south of England, and the mill-owners in whose society they are placed. Mr. Hale, indecisive, inactive, in whom thought is more powerful than reality, is as helpless as a child among these men of action, and utterly unable to cope with the problems they are facing. Margaret, the refined daughter of a poor clergyman, is contrasted with the proud Mrs. Thornton, the mother of a wealthy manufacturer, who would make money, not birth, the basis of social distinctions. But Margaret is even better contrasted with the poor factory girl, Bessy Higgins, who turns to her for help and sympathy. There is hardly a story of Mrs. Gaskell's which is not adorned by the friendship of the heroine for some other woman in the book.

In both these novels, she taught that the only solution of the great problem of capital and labour was a recognition of the fact that their interests were identical, and that friendly intercourse was the only means of breaking down the barrier that divided them.

Mrs. Gaskell was so versatile, she touched upon so many problems of human life, that it is almost impossible to summarise her work. _Ruth_ considers the question of the girl who has been betrayed. Ruth is as pure as Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and like her is a victim of circumstances. A stranger who has taken her under her protection reports that Ruth is a widow, and Ruth passively acquiesces in the deception, hoping that her son may never know the disgrace of his birth. But the truth comes to light, involving in temporary disgrace Ruth and her son, and the household of Mr. Benson, the dissenting minister whose home had been her place of refuge. But Mrs. Gaskell is always optimistic. By her good deeds, Ruth wins the love and honour of the entire community. This novel was loudly assailed. It was claimed that Mrs. Gaskell had condoned immorality, and it was considered dangerous teaching that good deeds were an atonement for such a sin. But if _Ruth_ found detractors, it also found warm admirers, who recognised the broader teachings of the story. Mrs. Jameson wrote to Mrs. Gaskell:

"I hope I do understand your aim--you have lifted up your voice against 'that demoralising laxity of principle,' which I regard as the ulcer lying round the roots of society; and you have done it wisely and well, with a mingled courage and delicacy which excite at once my gratitude and my admiration."

The scene of _Sylvia's Lovers_ is laid in Whitby, at a time when the press-gang was kidnapping men for the British navy. It is a story of the loves, jealousies, and sorrows of sailors, shopkeepers, and small farmers, among whom Sylvia moves as the central figure. Du Maurier, who illustrated the second edition of this novel, was so charmed with the heroine that he named his daughter Sylvia for her. This story, like _Ruth_, has much of the sentimentalism so fashionable in the middle of the nineteenth century. The leading canon of criticism at that time was the power with which a writer could move the emotions of the reader, and the novelist was expected either to convulse his readers with laughter or dissolve them into tears. There are many funny scenes in _Sylvia's Lovers_, but the key-note is pathos. Like many novels of Dickens, there are death-bed scenes introduced only for the luxury of weeping over sorrows that are not real, and there are melodramatic situations as in her other books. Parts of this novel suggested to Tennyson the poem of _Enoch Arden_.

But, however powerful may be the novels dealing with the questions that daily confront the poor, there is a perennial charm in the society of people who dwell amid rural scenes. Mrs. Gaskell has written several short stories of the pastoral type. Such a story is _Cousin Phillis_. It is a beautiful idyl and reminds one of the old pastorals in which ladies and gentlemen played at shepherds and shepherdesses. Cousin Phillis cooks, irons, reads Dante, helps the haymakers, falls in love, and mends a broken heart, and is brave, true, and unselfish. Her father is what one would expect from such a daughter. He cultivates his small farm, finds rest from his labours in reading, and neglects none of the many duties which belong to him as the dissenting minister of a small village.

_Cranford_ and _Wives and Daughters_ have this in common, that the scene of both is laid in the village of Knutsford. The former is a rambling story of events in two or three households, and of the social affairs in which all the village is concerned. It is without doubt the favourite of Mrs. Gaskell's novels. _Wives and Daughters_ was Mrs. Gaskell's last story, and was left unfinished at her death. It shows a great artistic advance over her earlier work. The plot is more natural; it has not so many sharp contrasts, which George Eliot criticised in Mrs. Gaskell's stories. The characters are also more subtle. Molly, the daughter of the village doctor, is an unselfish, thoughtful girl, but with none of that unreal goodness which Dickens sometimes gave to his heroines. When she receives her first invitation to a child's party, and her father is wondering whether or not she can go, her speech is characteristic of her nature:

"Please, Papa,--I do wish to go--but I don't care about it."

Molly feels very keenly, and longs for things with all the strength of an ardent nature, but she always subordinates herself and her wishes to others. In the character of Cynthia, Mrs. Gaskell makes a plea for the heartless coquette. Cynthia is beautiful, she likes to please those in whose company she finds herself, but quickly forgets the absent. It is not her fault that young men's hearts are brittle, for it is as natural for her to smile, and be gay and forget, as it is for Molly to love, be silent, and remember. So it is Cynthia who has the lovers, while Molly is neglected. Clare, Cynthia's mother, is more selfish than her daughter, but she has learned the art of seeming to please others while thinking only of pleasing herself. She is as crafty as Becky Sharp, but softer, more feline, and more subtle; a much commoner type in real life than Thackeray's diplomatic heroine.

Mr. A. W. Ward, in the biographical introduction to the Knutsford Edition of her novels, says of her later work:

"When Mrs. Gaskell had become conscious that if true to herself, to her own ways of looking at men and things, to the sympathies and hopes with which life inspired her, she had but to put pen to paper, she found what it has been usual to call her later manner--the manner of which _Cranford_ offered the first adequate illustration, and of which _Cousin Phillis_ and _Wives and Daughters_ represent the consummation."

The same critic compares the later work of Mrs. Gaskell with the later work of George Sand and finds that "in their large-heartedness" they are similar. He also gives George Sand's tribute to her English contemporary. "Mrs. Gaskell," she said, "has done what neither I nor other female writers in France can accomplish: she has written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and yet which every girl will be the better for reading."

It is not often that a novelist finds another writer to take up and enlarge her work as did Mrs. Gaskell. Her novels contain the germ of much of George Eliot's earlier writings. _The Moorland Cottage_ suggested many parts of _The Mill on the Floss_. Edward and Maggie Brown--the former important, consequential and dictatorial, the latter self-forgetful, eager to help others, and by her very eagerness prone to blunders--were developed by George Eliot into the characters of Tom and Maggie Tulliver. The weak and fretful mothers in the two books are much alike, while the love story and the catastrophe have the same general outline.

They both drew largely from the working people of the North or of the Midlands, and both constantly introduced Dissenters. Silas Marner belongs to the manufacturing North, and the people of Lantern Yard are of the same class as those of Manchester and Milton. Felix Holt and Adam Bede belong to the same type as Jem Wilson and Mr. Thornton, while Esther Lyon is not unlike Margaret Hale. Both often presented life from the point of view of the poor.

Both were interested in the development of character, and in the changes which it underwent for good or evil under the influence of outward circumstances. But George Eliot had greater intellectual power than Mrs. Gaskell. She had the broader view and the deeper insight. Mrs. Gaskell could never have conceived the plots nor the characters of _Romola_ nor _Middlemarch_. She constantly introduced extraneous matter to shape her plots according to her will, while with George Eliot the fate of character is as hard and unyielding as was the fate of predestination in the sermons of the old Calvinistic divines. Mrs. Gaskell, like Dickens, introduced death-bed scenes merely to play upon the emotions. George Eliot was never guilty of this defect; with her, character is a fatalism that is inexorable.

But Mrs. Gaskell had a more hopeful view of life than had George Eliot. The Unitarians believe in man and have faith in the clemency of God. This makes them a cheerful people. However dark the picture that Mrs. Gaskell paints, we have faith that conditions will soon be better, and at the close of the book we see the dawn of a brighter day. George Eliot had taken the suggestions of Mrs. Gaskell and amplified them with many details that the woman of lesser genius had omitted. But to each was given her special gift. If George Eliot's characters stand out as more distinct personalities, they are drawn with less sympathy. George Eliot's men and women are often hard and sharp in outline; Mrs. Gaskell's, no matter how poor or ignorant, are softened and refined.

It was this quality that made it possible for her to write that inimitable comedy of manners, _Cranford_. Her other novels with their deep pathos, strong passion, and dramatic situations must be read to show the breadth of her powers, but _Cranford_ will always give its author a unique place in literature. Imagine the material that furnished the groundwork of this story put into the hands of any novelist from Richardson to Henry James. It seems almost like sacrilege to think what even Jane Austen might have said of these dear elderly ladies. As for Thackeray, their little devices to keep up appearances would have seemed to him instances of feminine deceit, and he might have put even Miss Jenkyns with her admiration of Dr. Johnson into his _Book of Snobs_. What tears Dickens would have drawn from our eyes over the love story of Miss Matty and Mr. Holbrook. How George Eliot would have mourned over the shallowness of their lives. Henry James would have squinted at them and their surroundings through his eye-glass until he had discovered every faded spot on the carpet or skilful darn in the curtain. Miss Mitford would have appreciated these ladies and loved them as did Mrs. Gaskell, only she would have been so interested in the flowers and birds and clouds that she would have forgotten all about the Cranford

## parties, and would probably have ignored the presence in their midst of

the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, the sister-in-law of an earl. So we must conclude that only Mrs. Gaskell could make immortal this village of femininity, where to be a man was considered almost vulgar, but into which she has introduced one of the most chivalrous gentlemen in the person of Captain Browne, and one of the most faithful of lovers in the person of Mr. Holbrook, while no book has a more lovable heroine than fluttering, indecisive Miss Matty, over whose fifty odd years the sorrows of her youth have cast their lengthening shadows.

_Mary Barton_ is a work of genius. Only a woman of high ideals could have drawn the character of Margaret Hale, an earlier Marcella, or Molly Gibson, or Mr. Thornton, or Mr. Holman. Only a woman of deep insight could have created a woman like Ruth: a book which in its problem and its deep earnestness reminds one of _Aurora Leigh_. But her readers will always love Mrs. Gaskell for the sake of the gentle ladies of _Cranford_.

CONCLUSION

Mrs. Gaskell died on the twelfth of November, 1865. Of the novelists who have been considered in this book only three survived her, Mrs. Bray, Mrs. S. C. Hall, and Harriet Martineau, but they added little to prose fiction after that date. During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, however, the number of books written by women continued to increase each year. Julia Kavanagh was the author of several novels, the first of which _The Three Paths_, was published in 1848; all her stories were written with high moral aim and delicacy of feeling. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1850, is probably the most powerful novel ever written to plead the cause of oppressed humanity. Dinah Maria Muloch Craik kept up the interest in the domestic novel; her most popular book, _John Halifax, Gentleman_, has lost none of its charm for young women, even if it does not meet the requirements of a classic. Mrs. Henry Wood is still remembered as the author of the melodramatic _East Lynne_, but her best stories are the _Johnny Ludlow Papers_, which deal with character alone; her popularity is attested by the fact that more than a million copies of her books have been issued. Charlotte Yonge's forgotten novels were classed among the _Church Stories_, because they contain so much piety and devotion. Of a different type was Miss de la Ramee, who wrote under the name of Ouida; she had fine gifts of word-painting, but a fondness for the questionable in conduct. Miss Braddon, the author of _Lady Audley's Secret_, excelled in complicated plots. Mrs. Oliphant has been a most versatile writer, and followed almost every style of prose fiction; her domestic stories are generally considered her best. Anne Thackeray, better known as Mrs. Ritchie, the daughter of the great novelist, has written several novels, all of which have a delightfully feminine touch. Miss Rhoda Broughton has entertained the reading public by love stories which hold the attention until the marriage takes place. But all these women fade into insignificance beside George Eliot, whose first story, _The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton_, appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1857, and whose last novel, _Daniel Deronda_, was published nearly twenty years later, in 1876.

It seems strange that any reader of her books should have thought them the product of a man's brain, as was at first believed. For, notwithstanding her power in developing a plot, her breadth of view, and her mental grasp, her genius is essentially feminine. She excelled in analysis of character, in attention to details, in ethical teaching, and in artistic truthfulness, the qualities in which women have been pre-eminent. Only a woman's pen could have drawn such characters as Dinah Morris, Maggie Tulliver, and Dorothea Casaubon, or could have followed the minute and subtle influences under which the plot of _Middlemarch_ is shaped. George Eliot has left a larger portrait gallery of women than any other novelist. Not only has she drawn different grades of society, but, what is perhaps a more difficult task, she has drawn the different grades of spiritual greatness and moral littleness. She brought the psychological novel to a degree of perfection which has never been surpassed.

Mrs. Oliphant has thus written of George Eliot's place in literature:

"Another question which has been constantly put to this age, and which is pushed with greater zeal every day, as to the position of women in literature and the height which it is in their power to attain, was solved by this remarkable woman, in a way most flattering to all who were and are fighting the question of equality between the two halves of mankind; for here was visibly a woman who was to be kept out by no barriers, who sat down quietly from the beginning of her career in the highest place, and, if she did not absolutely excel all her contemporaries in the revelation of the human mind and the creation of new human beings, at least was second to none in those distinguishing characteristics of genius."

We are too near the nineteenth century to decide as to the relative positions of its great novelists. At one time George Eliot was placed at the head of all writers of fiction, with Dickens and Thackeray as rivals for the second place. But she was dethroned by Thackeray, and there are signs that the final kingship will be given to Charles Dickens, unless Scott receives it instead.

Fashions in novels change at least every fifty years. Exciting plots and situations, strong emotional scenes, sharp contrasts, are not demanded by present readers, who also turn away with disgust from the saintly heroine and the irreclaimable villain. Of the many volumes of fiction written in the eighteenth century only two are in general circulation to-day, _Robinson Crusoe_ and _The Vicar of Wakefield_. But all those once popular novels, even if their very names are now forgotten, have done their work in shaping the thought and morals of their own and succeeding generations.

INDEX

_Abbott, The_, 137 _Absentee, The_, 61, 112-113, 122 _Ada Reis_, 203 _Adam Bede_, 84, 289, 295 Addison, Joseph, 21, 28 _Adeline Mowbray, or the Mother and Daughter_, 150-153 _Adventures of an Atom_, 23 _Afflicted Parent, The, or the Undutiful Child Punished_, 125 _Age of Wordsworth, The_, 193 _Agnes Grey_, 258-259, 261, 265 Ainsworth, William Harrison, 216, 239 Alderson, Miss, _see_ Opie, Amelia _Amorous Friars, or the Intrigues of a Convent_, 42 _Amos Barton_, 294 _Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda_, 18 _Antiquary, The_, 102, 104 _Arabian Nights_, 15, 233 Arblay, Madame D', _see_ Burney, Frances _Arblay, Madame D', Essay on_, 57-58, 61, 168-169 Arden, Enoch, 187 Arnold, Matthew, 257 _Artless Tales_, 139 _Athenaeum, The_, 194, 256 _Aurora Leigh_, 292 Austen, Jane, 39, 45, 60, 101, 157-178, 179, 180, 191, 195, 196, 216, 263, 270, 276, 291

Baillie, Joanna, 154, 155 Balzac, Honore de, 170 _Banker's Wife, The_, 225 Barbauld, Mrs. Anna Letitia, 121 Barrett, Miss, _see_ Browning, Elizabeth _Barring Out, The_, 125 _Bas Bleu_, 62, 63 _Beauty Put to its Shifts, or the Young Virgin's Rambles_, 42 Behn, Aphra, 1, 13-19 _Belford Regis_, 193-196 _Belinda_, 121, 177 _Beside the Bonny Brier Bush_, 137 _Betsy Thoughtless, Miss, The History of_, 36-39, 46, 48 _Bithynia, An Adventure in_, 233 _Blackwood's Magazine_, 107, 294 Blake, William, 2 _Blazing World, Description of a New World Called the_, 6-7 Blessington, Lady, 232, 233 Blind Harry the Minstrel, 143, 144 Bonheur, Rosa, 1 _Book of Snobs, The_, 291 Boswell, James, 138 Bousset, 3 Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, 294 Bray, Ann Eliza, 216, 225-230, 232, 293 _Bride of Lammermoor, The_, 256 Bronte, Anne, 249, 250, 257-261 Bronte, Charlotte, 85, 174, 210, 249, 250, 256, 258, 261-273 Bronte, Emily, 248, 249-257, 258, 267, 270, 271, 273 Brontes, The, 247-273, 276 _Brooke and Brooke Farm_, 242 Broughton, Rhoda, 294 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 81, 103, 190, 242 Brunton, Alexander, 156 Brunton, Mary, 41, 149, 153-156, 262 _Bubbled Knights, or Successful Contrivances_, 42 Bulwer, Edward, Lord Lytton, 200, 216, 223 Burke, Edmund, 46, 54, 62 Burney, Charles, 46 Burney, Frances, 39, 45-61, 168, 176, 177, 181, 195 Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 109, 200-206, 210-213, 257

_Caleb Williams_, 73 _Camilla, or a Picture of Youth_, 59-60, 176, 177 _Canterbury Tales, The_, 106-110 _Caroline Evelyn, The History of_, 47 Carter, Elizabeth, 62 _Castle of Otranto, The_, 88 _Castle Rackrent_, 111-112, 117 _Castles of Athlyn and Dunbayne_, 89 Cavendish, Margaret, _see_ Newcastle, Duchess of Cavendish, William, _see_ Newcastle, Duke of _Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb_, 217-219 _Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress_, 54-59, 60, 61, 78, 176, 177 _Celestina_, 80 _Chap-Books_, 67 Chapone, Hester, 62 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 106 _Cheap Repository, The_, 67-71 _Childe Harold_, 200, 219 Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde), 10 _Clarissa Harlowe_, 8, 26, 30, 171 _Clelia_, 32 _Clubman, The_, 219 _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_, 71-72 Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 109 Collier, Jeremy, 61 Colman, George, 42, 43, 46 _Confessions of a Pretty Woman_, 233 Congreve, William, 217 Cooper, James Fenimore, 16 Corneille, 3 _Cottagers of Glenburnie, The_, 16 Cottin, Sophie, Madame de, 262 _Court Gazette_, 20 _Courtenay of Walreddon; a Romance of the West_, 227 _Cousin Phillis_, 286-287, 288, 292 Crabbe, George, 263 Craik, Dinah Maria Muloch, 293 Craik's _English Prose_, 245 _Cranford_, 277, 281, 287, 288, 291-292 Crewe, Catherine, 232 _Cry of the Children, The_, 242 Curtis, George William, 174

_Daniel Deronda_, 294 Dante, Alighieri, 286 David Copperfield, 164 _David Simple_, 26-31 _Deerbrook_, 243 Defoe, Daniel, 146 _De Foix, or Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the Fourteenth Century_, 226 _Desmond_, 74-77, 80 _Destiny_, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186-187 Diana of the Crossways, 103 Dickens, Charles, 56, 69, 76, 77, 87, 102, 116, 164, 231, 236, 240, 247, 264, 268, 269, 277, 281, 282, 286, 290, 291, 296 _Discipline_, 155 Disraeli, Benjamin, 87, 200, 216, 247, 269, 279 Dombey and Son, 225 _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, 235-236 Dryden, John, 13 _Duchess of Malfi, The_, 256 Du Maurier, 285

_East Lynne_, 293 Edgeworth, Maria, 102, 111-128, 130, 131, 133, 155, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 196, 197, 216, 243, 276 Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 115, 118, 119, 121, 124 _Eighteenth Century, History of the_, 44 Elia, _see_ Lamb, Charles Eliot, George, 84, 109, 119, 164, 174, 276, 277, 289-291, 294-296 Emma, 161-162, 166-167, 168, 170 _Emmeline_, 155 _Ennui_, 113, 122 _Enoch Arden_, 286 _Epipsychidion_, 214 _Essay on Irish Bulls_, see _Irish Bulls, Essay on_ _Essay on Madame D'Arblay_, see _Arblay, Madame D', Essay on_ _Ethelinda_, 79 Evans, Marian, _see_ Eliot, George _Evelina, or a Young Lady's Entrance into the World_, 39, 46, 47-54, 55, 59, 61, 78, 164, 176, 177 Evelyn, John, 5 _Evening Chronicle_, 231 _Examiner_, 22

_Fair Jilt, The_, 18 _Falkland_, 200, 216 _Falkner_, 214 _Fantom, Mr.: or the History of the New-Fashioned Philosopher, and his Man William_, 68, 72 Felix Holt, 289 _Female Education, Strictures on the Modern System of_, 71 _Female Quixote, The_, 32-35 Ferrier, Susan Edmonstone, 179-188, 189, 216 Fielding, Henry, 16, 24, 25, 26, 27, 34, 48, 101, 116, 277 Fielding, Sarah, 23, 24, 26-31 _Fits of Fitz-Ford_, 227 _Flies in Amber_, 233 _Florence Macarthy_, 129 _Fortnightly Review_, 185 Fox, Charles James, 40 _Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus_, 206-207, 215 _Fraser's Magazine_, 231 Froissart's _Chronicles_, 226

Gait, John, 216 Garnett, Sir Richard, 214 Garrick, David, 41, 46, 62 Garrison, William Lloyd, 245 Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 247, 267, 269, 270, 274-293 Genlis, Stephanie Felicite, Comtesse de, 118, 262 _Gentleman's Magazine, The_, 101 Gibbon, Edward, 54 _Glenarvon_, 200-203 Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, _see_ Wollstonecraft, Mary Godwin, William, 73, 150, 179, 205, 210, 221 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 174 Goldsmith, Oliver, 79 Gore, Catherine Grace Frances, 216-225, 233 Gosse, Edmund, 170 _Grand Cyrus, The_, 15, 32, 121 _Gulliver's Travels_, 23 Guy Mannering, 102

_Hackney Coachman, The_, 70 Hall, Anna Maria (Mrs. S. C.), 72, 179, 196-199, 216, 293 Hall, S. C., 140 Hamilton, Elizabeth, 133-137 _Hamiltons, The_, 224 Hamlet, 271 _Hard Times_, 282 Hardy, Thomas, 86, 170 _Harriet Stuart, The Life of_, 31 Harry, Blind, the Minstrel, _see_ Blind Harry the Minstrel Haywood, Eliza, 24, 36-39, 48 _Heir of Selwood, The_, 223, 225 Helen, 119 _Henrietta_, 35 _Henry de Pomeroy_, 227 _Henry Esmond_, 145 _Heptameron_, The, 2 Herford, C. H., 193 _Hints towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess_, 71 Homer, 2, 11, 175 Horace, 217 _Hour and the Man, The_, 242, 244-245 Huet, Bishop, Pierre Daniel, 46 _Humphry Clinker_, 8, 24, 44 _Hungarian Brothers_, 139

_Ibrahim_, 32, 121 _Ida, or the Woman of Athens_, 131 _Impetuous Lover, The, or the Guiltless Parricide_, 43 Inchbald, Elizabeth, 41, 73, 82-87, 105, 119, 221, 262 _Inheritance, The_, 181, 182-183, 184, 185, 187-188 _Irish Bulls, Essay on_, 115-116 _Irish Peasantry, Stories of the_, 197, 198 _Italian, The_, 91, 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101 Ivanhoe, 164

Jackson, Helen Hunt (H. H.), 16 James, G. P. R., 216, 239 James, Henry, 291 Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 285 _Jane Eyre_, 41, 82, 85, 250, 261, 263, 264-267, 270, 272 _Jealous Wife, The_, 233 Jeffrey, Francis, 180 Joan of Arc, 1 _John Halifax, Gentleman_, 293 _Johnny Ludlow Papers_, 294 Johnson, R. Brimley, 245 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 30, 31, 32, 39, 42, 46, 48, 55, 60, 62, 103, 128, 138, 291 _Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, The Life and Adventures of_, 237-239, 242 Jonson, Ben, 275 _Joseph Andrews_, 16, 36, 52 _Journey to Bath_, 41 Jules Verne, _see_ Verne, Jules

Kauffman, Angelica, 103 Kavanagh, Julia, 293 _King Lear_, see _Lear_ Knox, John, 188 _Kruitzener, or the German's Tale_, 108-109

_Lady Audley's Secret_, 294 _Lady Clare_, 183 _Lady of Lyons, The_, 223 _Lady's Magazine_, 190 Lafayette, Madame de, 3, 19, 41, 262 Lamb, Lady Caroline, 200-204 Lamb, Charles, 8, 12, 193 Lamb, William (Lord Melbourne), 200, 201, 202, 203, 204 _Landlady's Tale, The_, 109 Lang, Andrew, 102 Lanier, Sidney, 25 _Last Man, The_, 210-212 _Lazy Lawrence_, 125, 126 _Lear, King_, 256 Lee, Harriet, 88, 105-110 Lee, Sophia, 88, 105-110, 139 Lennox, Charlotte, 24, 31-36 _Letters of the Duchess of Newcastle_, 7-8 _Letters to Young Ladies_, 62 Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 101 "Library of Old Authors," Russell Smith, 12 _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_, see _Newcastle, Life of the Duke of_ _Lights and Shadows of Irish Life_, 197-198 _Lilly Dawson, The Story of_, 232 _Literary Gazette_, 202 _Lodore_, 212-214 Longueville, Duchesse de, 3 _Lucius_, 22 Lytton, Bulwer, _see_ Bulwer, Edward (Lord Lytton)

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 57, 61, 113, 168 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 207 Mackay, Sheriff, 143 _Magyar, The, and the Moslem_, 233 _Man and Superman_, 160 _Manchester Strike, A_, 243 Manley, Mary, 1, 19-23, 36 _Mansfield Park_, 61, 162-164, 171, 172 Marcella, 292 Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 2 _Marriage_, 181, 182, 184 Marsh, Anne, 231 Martineau, Harriet, 231, 232, 242-246, 269, 293 _Mary Barton_, 269, 278-281, 282, 283, 289, 292 Masson, David, 179 Maturin, Charles Robert, 101 _Mazeppa_, 206 Memoires du Comte de Comminges, 262 _Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la vertu_, 42 _Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia_, 36 _Michael Armstrong, The Life and Adventures of_, 241 _Middlemarch_, 290, 295 _Midsummer Eve, a Fairy Tale of Love_, 198-199 _Mill on the Floss_, The, 289, 295 Mitford, Mary Russell, 81, 144, 179, 183, 189-196, 216, 221, 227, 276, 291, 292 _Monastery, The_, 137, 271 _Monk, The_, 101 Montagu, Elizabeth, 62 Montagu, Mary Wortley, 233 _Monthly Review_, 77 _Monumental Effigies of Great Britain_, 226 Moore, Thomas, 131 _Moorland Cottage, The_, 289 More, Hannah, 62-72, 73 Morgan, Lady, 111, 197, 216 _Music, History of_, 46 _Mysteries of Udolpho, The_, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 104, 105, 141

_Nature and Art_, 85-86 _Nature's Pictures Drawn by Fancy's Pencil_, 7 _New Atalantis_, 19-23 Newcastle, Duchess of, 1, 3-13 Newcastle, Duke of, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 _Newcastle, Life of the Duke of_, 10-12 _Noctes Ambrosianae_, 183 _Nocturnal Reverie_, 79 North, Christopher (John James Wilson), 183, 185 _North and South_, 281-284, 289, 292 _Northanger Abbey_, 101, 160-161, 177 _Notre Dame de Paris_, 256 "Novelists' Library," 121 _Novels by Eminent Hands_, 217 _Nun, The, or the Perjured Duty_, 18

_O'Briens, The, and the O'Flahertys_, 129, 130-131 _O'Donnel_, 129-130 _Odyssey_, 113 _Old English Baron, The_, 88, 89 _Old Manor House, The_, 77-78, 79, 80 Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret, 294, 295 Opie, Mrs. Amelia, 41, 73, 149-153, 156, 216, 262 _Orange Girl of St. Giles's, The_, 69-70 Ormond, 113-115 _Oroonoko_, 13-18, 237, 242 _Orphans, The_, 126 _Othello_, 276 Ouida, 294 _Our Village_, 189, 190-193, 195, 196, 243 Owenson, Sydney, _see_ Morgan, Lady

_Pamela_, 8, 17, 18, 24, 31, 35, 46, 78, 164, 266 _Paradise Lost_, 72, 79 Pardoe, Julia, 231-234 _Pastor's Fireside, The_, 146 _Patronage_, 119 _Pelham_, 200 _Pendennis_, 200 _Perkin Warbeck, The Fortunes of_, 214 _Persuasion_, 158, 162-164, 167, 170, 172 Phillips, Wendell, 244 _Pickwick Papers_, 56 _Pilgrimages to English Shrines_, 72 _Pin Money_, 222-223 Plato, 11 _Political Economy Tales_, 242-243 _Polly Honeycomb_, 42, 43 Pope, Alexander, 22, 79, 160 Porter, Anna Maria, 133, 137-140, 216 Porter, Jane, 133, 137, 138, 140-148, 216 _Preferment, or My Uncle the Earl_, 220 Prevost, Abbe, 42 _Pride and Prejudice_, 157, 158-159, 161, 164, 166, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178 Princess of Cleves, The, 41, 262 _Professor, The_, 270

_Quarterly Review_, 131, 147, 148

Radcliffe, Ann, 88, 89-105, 108, 179, 270 Rambouillet, Marquise de, 3 Ramee, Louise de la, _see_ Ouida Ramsey, Charlotte, _see_ Lennox, Charlotte _Rape of the Lock_, 22 _Rasselas_, 46 _Recess, The_, 105-106 Reeve, Clara, 88-89 _Refugee in America, The_, 237 Richardson, Samuel, 8, 9, 17, 24, 26, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 48, 101, 154, 171, 277, 291 _Rights of Man_, 64 _Rights of Woman, Vindication of the_, see _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ Ritchie, Mrs., 126, 294 _Rival Beauties, The_, 233 _Rivals, The_, 41, 43 _Rob Roy_, 102 _Robinson Crusoe_, 146, 296 Rogers, Samuel, 201 _Romance of the Forest, The_, 91, 92, 93, 97, 101 _Romance of the Harem, The_, 233 _Romance of the West, A_, 228 Romeo and Juliet, 275 _Romola_, 290 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 73, 118 Ruskin, 195 _Ruth_, 281, 284-285, 286, 292

_St. Ronan's Well_, 174 Saintsbury, George, 185, 186 Sand, George, 262, 263, 288 Sappho, 1 Schlosser, 44 Scott, Sir Walter, 18, 36, 102, 103, 104, 105, 118, 128, 141, 144, 155, 164, 173, 179, 180, 181, 184, 216, 225, 228, 229, 230, 264, 271, 277, 296 _Scottish Chiefs, The_, 142-145 Scuderi, Mlle. de, 3, 19, 32, 33, 35, 120, 121 _Seasons, The_, 79 _Secret Intrigues of the Count of Caramania, The_, 36 _Selborne, The Natural History and Antiquities of_, 191 _Self-Control_, 154-155, 156 _Sense and Sensibility_, 159-160, 161, 170, 171 Sevigne, Madame, de, 3 Shakespeare, William, 5, 103, 128, 168, 169, 170, 174, 271, 275 _Shakespeare, Essay on the Genius of_, 62 Shaw, Bernard, 160 Shelley, Mary, 200, 204-215, 262 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 204, 205, 206, 208, 210-214 _Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, The_, 68, 69, 72 Sheridan, Mrs. Frances, 24, 39-42 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 40, 41 _Shirley_, 267-270 _Sicilian Romance, The_, 91, 93, 94 _Sidney Biddulph, The Memoirs of Miss_, 39-42, 74 _Silas Marner_, 289 _Simple Story, A_, 82-84, 262 _Simple Susan_, 126-127 _Simple Tales_, 153 _Sir Charles Grandison_, 8, 37, 53 _Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative_, 146-148 _Sister, The_, 35 _Sketches by Boz_, 241 _Sketches of English Character_, 219-220 _Sketches of Irish Character_, 196-197 Smith, Charlotte, 41, 73-82, 87, 102, 103, 105, 191, 221 Smith Russell, "Library of Old Authors," _see_ "Library of Old Authors" Smollett, Tobias, 8, 23, 24, 88, 101, 179 _Soldier of Lyons, The, a Tale of the Tuileries_, 223 Sothern, Thomas, 13, 15 Souza, Madame de, 262 _Spectator Papers_, 7, 29 Stael, Madame de (Anne Louise Necker), 262, 263 Steele, Richard, 21, 22, 28 Sterne, Laurence, 24, 25, 88, 102, 169 _Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, see _Irish Peasantry, Stories of the_ Stothard, Charles, 226 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 15, 238, 293 Swift, Jonathan, 22, 23 Swinburne, Charles Algernon, 256 _Sybil_, 269, 279 _Sylvia's Lovers_, 285-286

Taine, 25 _Talba, The, or Moor of Portugal_, 226 _Tale of Two Cities_, 145 _Tales of Fashionable Life_, 119-120 _Tales of my Landlord, The_, 181 _Tales of Real Life_, 153 _Tales that Never Die_, 127 _Tatler, The_, 22, 29 _Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The_, 259-261 Tencin, Mme. de, 262 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 183, 286 Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 284 Thackeray, Anna Isabella, _see_ Ritchie, Mrs. Thackeray, William Makepeace, 87, 102, 116, 120, 164, 176, 216, 217, 231, 237, 247, 264, 277, 288, 291, 296 _Thaddeus of Warsaw_, 140-141 _Theresa Marchmont_, 217 _Thomas the Rhymer_, 104 Thrale, Mrs. (Mrs. Piozzi), 48 _Three Paths, The_, 293 _Tintern Abbey_, 93 Tolstoi, Count Leo, 86, 170 _Tom Jones_, 26, 37, 53, 141 Tourgenieff, 170 _Trelawny of Trelawne; or the Prophecy: a Legend of Cornwall_, 228 Trollope, Anthony, 234, 239 Trollope, Frances, 231, 232, 234-242, 243, 269

_Udolpho, The Mysteries of_, see _Mysteries of Udolpho, The_ _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, 15, 238, 293 _Undine_, 254

_Valperga: or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca_, 207-210 _Vanity Fair_, 164, 288 _Venetia_, 200 Verne, Jules, 6 _Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 46, 79, 296 _Vicar of Wrexhill, The_, 240 _Village Politics: Addressed to all Mechanics, Journeymen, and Labourers in Great Britain. By Will Chip, a Country Carpenter_, 64-65 _Villette_, 270-273 _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_, 74, 149, 204 Vivian, 119, 122 _Vivian Grey_, 200, 216, 217, 219 Voltaire, Francois, 73

Wallace, 143 Walpole, Horace, 88, 89 _Wanderer, The, or Female Difficulties_, 59, 60 Ward, A. W., 288 Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 267 _Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak; a Legend of Devon_, 227 _Waste Not, Want Not_, 125 _Waverley_, 45, 60, 137, 144, 155, 178 _Waverley Novels_, 102, 117, 145, 216 Welsh, Charles, 67, 127 _Werner, or the Inheritance_, 109 _Westminster Review_, 221, 224 White, Gilbert, 191 _White Hoods, The_, 226 _Whole Duty of Man_, 64 _Widow Barnaby_, 239 _Widow Married, The_, 239 _Widow Wedded, The, or the Barnabys in America_, 239 _Wild Irish Girl, The_, 129 _Will Chip, a Country Carpenter_, see _Village Politics_ _Winchelsea, Lady_, 79 _Window in Thrums, The_, 137 _Windsor Forest_, 79 _Wives and Daughters_, 287-288, 292, 293 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 73, 74, 149, 150, 204, 205, 210 Wood, Mrs. Henry, 293 Wordsworth, William, 79, 93, 127, 165, 241 _Wuthering Heights_, 249, 256, 258, 261, 265, 267, 271 _Wycherley, William_, 13

_Yere-Batan-Serai_, 234 Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 294