Why is food poverty a fact of life in 21st-century Britain?
Letters: Today’s need for food banks shows how little society has evolved from the 19th century, writes Karen Wynyard. Plus Susan Le Jeune on attitudes to food banks
February 2022
What we're reading
What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they’ve enjoyed in February
David Baddiel, Houman Barekat and Guardian readers Rosa Jones and Elizabeth Best discuss the titles they’ve read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments
August 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 cousins in fiction
From Du Maurier to Balzac, cousins can be cruel and exploitative, beacons of sexual yearning, or wealthy benefactors who save the day - and the author’s plot
June 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 books about witch-hunts
These stories by authors from Elizabeth Gaskell to Jeanette Winterson show how societies in turmoil turn on the most vulnerable
September 2019
North and South review – strikes and strife in a factory town
Rarely has theatre seemed so much part of the public sphere as in this electrifying adaptation of the Elizabeth Gaskell novel
September 2018
Mrs Gaskell & Me by Nell Stevens review – desire, satire and making things up
Should we stop reading into authors' lives and get back to their books?
Nell Stevens
April 2017
Elizabeth Gaskell: Charlotte Brontë's unlikely defender against prurient gossip
Where Gaskell was gregarious and conventional, Brontë was an introverted maverick – but the former did fierce, invaluable work to protect the latter’s reputation
100 best nonfiction books of all time
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 63 – The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell (1857)
Possibly Elizabeth Gaskell’s finest work – a bold portrait of a brilliant woman worn down by her father and the death of her siblings
Top 10s
Top 10 books about Manchester
From Friedrich Engels and Mrs Gaskell to WG Sebald and Anthony Burgess, these are some great books about the great city in ‘the south of the north’
October 2016
In a class of their own: the greatest snobs in literary history
From Cranford and Pooter, the middle-class snob novel ploughed on through Orwell, Kingsley Amis – and even Margaret Drabble. But where is it now?
November 2015
Charlotte Brontë: A Life review – sympathetic and complex
Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte Brontë breaks little new ground but is full of fascinating detail
July 2015
Dickens's marginalia reveal famous contributors to his journal
Bound volumes of All the Year Round, the author’s popular magazine, show that Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell were among the names behind anonymous pieces
October 2014
Elizabeth Gaskell’s rare Victorian villa reopens after £2.5m restoration
Fans of Cranford can visit the author’s house where furniture, decoration and fittings have been painstakingly restored
July 2014
Top 10s
Philip Hensher's top 10 parallel narratives
From Mrs Gaskell to David Mitchell, the novelist picks the best of a surprisingly long tradition that pairs unconnected but related stories
May 2014
Books blog
Marriage plots: the best wedding dresses in literature
Moira Redmond: It's that time of year traditionally reserved for tying the knot. So what are your favourite wedding scenes or outfits in fiction?
Move over Lizzie Bennet – let's hear it for the unsung heroine
Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, has been unfairly dismissed by readers and critics. To mark the novel's 200th anniversary, writers celebrate literary leading ladies who have been overshadowed by their showier sisters
Boats, airports and an endangered fish – strange ways to honour literary greats
The decision to name Irish military vessels after Samuel Beckett and James Joyce has provoked confusion, but writers have always lent their names to weird and wonderful things. By John Dugdale
January 2014
Books blog
What Tess of the D'Urbervilles could learn from Strictly Come Dancing
Moira Redmond: I can't help thinking a bit of popular TV might have cheered up the lives of many a classic book character
February 2013
The Northerner
Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester home to get £2.5m restoration
A Heritage Lottery Fund grant will help restore villa where Cranford and North & South were written back to its Victorian splendour
