SHIRLEY FOSTER is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Sheffield. She has published in areas of Victorian women's fiction, English and American travel writing and children's literature. She has recently co-authored an anthology of women's travel texts.

This literary biographical study examines the life and works of the mid-Victorian woman novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell, whose popularity is now well established. It places her writing in the context of her attitudes towards creative production, her relationship with publishers, and her literary friendships, as well as examining those events of her life which fed into her work. It pays particular attention to the ways in which she sought to reconcile the conflicting demands made upon her, as woman and as artist.