Elizabeth Gaskell's complete works

Some months ago we presented a luxurious and extraordinary complete edition of the works of Harriet Martineau. This month the publishers, Pickering & Chatto, release the second set of the complete works of Elizabeth Gaskell. In this set, it is included, The Life of Charlotte Brontë:

Works of Elizabeth Gaskell
The Pickering Masters ~ 2 Sets of 5 Volumes
General Editor: Joanne ShattockAdvisory Editor: Angus EassonVolume Editors: Linda Peterson, Josie Billington, Alan Shelston, Charlotte Mitchell, Elisabeth Jay, Linda K Hughes, Deirdre d'Albertis, Marion Shaw, Joanne Wilkes.

The Pickering & Chatto edition of The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell is the first comprehensive critical edition of her work to be published. It brings together, for the first time, her journalism, some of which has never been republished, her extensive shorter fiction, which was published in various collections during her lifetime, her early personal writing, including a diary written between 1835 and 1838 when she was a young mother, her five full-length novels and The Life of Charlotte Brontë.

Publication details
1 85196 777 X: Volumes1–3,5&7: £450/$7502376 pp: 234x156mm: 2005
1 85196 782 6: Volumes 4,6,8–10: £450/$695c.2,000 pp: 234x156mm: July 2006

The Pickering & Chatto edition of The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell is fully reset. Copy texts have been carefully chosen, according to the publishing history of individual works. Textual variants are noted at the end of each volume and individual works are accompanied by a headnote detailing the circumstances of publication, together with full explanatory notes. A general introduction to the edition traces Gaskell’s reputation from lifetime reviews of individual works through to late Victorian assessments of her achievement, the waning of her popularity at the end of the nineteenth century and its revival in the mid-twentieth. Throughout this process the role played by biographies and by the publication of her letters will be emphasised. The introduction also discusses the history of the earlier editions and collections of Gaskell’s works and offers a rationale for the organisation of this definitive edition. In addition each volume contains a critical introduction to the text(s) included in the volume.The Editorial Board is comprised of well-known nineteenth-century scholars drawn from universities in the United Kingdom, North America and Australasia, many of whom have written extensively on Elizabeth Gaskell and several of whom have edited individual works or collections of works by her and by other nineteenth-century writers.

Volume 8 The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). Edited by Linda Peterson (Yale University). (The copy text is the first edition)

Categories: Books, Biography