Some novels with a similar theme to Elizabeth and Ruth
I recently contributed to a marvellous website https://bookdna.com that promotes authors and their books in various ingenious ways in order to help readers find fiction they will love. Its founder, Ben Fox, says that book marketing is ‘broken’ – I think we can all agree there – and that authors deserve a better book site. […]
Why Was Ruth Banned and Burned?
The story of Ruth is rather different from Pasley’s story as set out in the letter to Dickens, although Ruth is a similar age to Pasley when the novel opens and an orphan. Like Pasley she is apprenticed as a seamstress. However in the novel Ruth is sent to the local Huntsman’s Ball to mend […]
Publication Day!
So it’s finally arrived! The day that every author waits for with an almost equal mixture of anticipation and anxiety! It’s very much like bringing a child into the world. Hopes and fears, feeling protective and yet wanting it to go out there, develop a life of its own and travel! It’s almost nine years […]
First Review!
So lovely to see this early review of Elizabeth and Ruth before publication!
Why Elizabeth Gaskell?
I was always drawn to Elizabeth Gaskell as a writer who lived in Manchester and who wrote about its social issues and conditions. She was born in London in 1810, the daughter of a Unitarian minister. Her mother died when she was a year old and her mother’s oldest sister brought her up in Knutsford. […]
Elizabeth and Ruth – the questions I had to ask
Pasley’s story as presented in the letter from Elizabeth Gaskell to Charles Dickens is both tragic and dramatic, but there are so many gaps in it that I had to do further research to fill them in. And some of them couldn’t be filled in directly so I had to make educated guesses about such […]
Top Reads of 2025
Ever since lockdown when I read voraciously and on more than one occasion ordered the same book twice, I’ve kept lists of all the books I’ve read in any one year. I give the ones I particularly enjoyed a 5* rating which is a quick way of reminding myself to look up other works by […]
More about Elizabeth and Ruth
I first came across the story about Elizabeth and Pasley in Jenny Uglow’s marvellous biography of Elizabeth Gaskell. It was just a short paragraph that suggested that Elizabeth was inspired to write her second novel Ruth when she visited the young girl in prison. I was intrigued enough to buy a volume of Elizabeth’s collected […]
Elizabeth And Ruth
My New Book! Hello and welcome to my new blog on my brand-new website! I have a lot to say, because my latest novel Elizabeth and Ruth, is coming out on 9 February next year (2026) with the wonderful Salt Publishing! Elizabeth and Ruth is about a Victorian writer, Elizabeth Gaskell. Elizabeth Gaskell is probably […]
