Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Do you think the deaths in North and South are too sudden and unrealistic? Well it turns out that Gaskell herself dropped dead at a tea party at the age of 55.
Elizabeth Gaskell had a son named Willie who died at the age of four. It was Gaskell's husband who first encouraged her to take up writing as a way of working through her grief.
Gaskell was close friends with Charlotte Bronte, the author of classics like Jane Eyre. When Bronte died, her father asked Gaskell to write Charlotte's official biography, which Gaskell did.