Hi!

This is actually something I have thought about a lot! But I don't have a conclusive answer as of yet.

Anne Brontë seems to be mostly... on a lane of her own? While -or-because she shares things with Austen and Gaskell and her sisters too.

If there's a link between Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Tenant, it is the importance of mercy and forgiveness. In Jane Eyre it is the necessity and heroism of radical forgiveness -redemption depends pretty much exclusively on God's power to touch the person and change them. In Wuthering Heights you get the picture of life without mercy or forgiveness, and the intensity of misery and destruction it causes; mercy, forgiveness and metanoia are seen vaguely as anything from personal choice to natural development (I don't think Emily is interested in that part, really).

In Tenant these are more to the background, but ultimately necessary. Helen must be forgiven and forgive herself for her bad choice of a husband, Gilbert must be forgiven his youthful pride, anger, and player attitude, in order for there to be a happy ending to the story. But in both cases atonement must happen as a conditio sine qua non to forgiveness. Only God forgives unconditionally, without repentance or atonement; Anne's universalism comes across strongly like this in Arthur's protracted agony. Not even Arthur will be damned, even if it means his spending till the end of time suffering purification.

It is these two things, I think, that approximate her to, and distance her from, Austen and Gaskell. Anne Brontë is concerned with morality in the sense of making good and bad behavior a very important part of her narratives, which is something Charlotte and Emily Brontë are not interested in much, but that is very important to Austen. How each approaches this issue is different, however. Austen builds an ideal of the gentleman/gentlewoman as accomplished forms of humanity, acquired through virtues, and the moral narratives of her stories are explorations of what those virtues mean (sense, constancy, generosity, patience, etc). Anne Brontë, to me, seems more interested in the circumstances that favor or hinder goodness. For her a life of work, a life of connection with the land, are extremely influential factors in a person's inclination to goodness and ability to reform. That's what sets Hattersley apart from a guy like Grimsby. Austen might share some of the idea that London and Bath are corrupting places (notoriously in Mansfield Park) as a general thing, but their relevance to the moral make-up of people is not that significant.

Religion is more explicitly important to Anne that it is for Austen, and in that way she's closer to Gaskell, and both are also universalists, but I feel Gaskell is more agnostic about it. Where Anne is positively convinced that all will be saved one way or another, Gaskell tends to evade the issue to focus more on what a person's religious beliefs do to their moral worldview, and in that way her moral preoccupations are highlighted in this aspect too. Because of this also is that I feel Gaskell has a richer perspective of the communities and the relationships that conform them; Anne tends to have a more atomized perspective, closer to Charlotte and Emily's (this difference likely defined by their respective upbringings and life experiences).

These would be the reasons why I'd ultimately exclude Anne from the tradition-thread I think there is between Austen and Gaskell (emphasis on virtues as framework for ethics and morality, centrality of friendship) but she's also... not that significantly far off? Certainly her good characters are virtuous characters, but I don't think that is the way she understands them. Gilbert's friendships with Helen and Eliza are relevant to the plot and influential to his character, but they seem to exist as preambula to romantic relationships, and other friendships that are present in the text are much more loosely conceived (one wouldn't think of Frederick and Gilbert or even Helen and Milicent as friends in the way Darcy and Bingley or Wentworth and Benwick are).

Ultimately to me it is a case of "sort of there, but not quite". However, as I said at the beginning, I'm not fully convinced, and I welcome argument one way or another wholeheartedly.

P.S.: I do agree that Anne's prose feels close to Austen by its trim-ness (something Gaskell doesn't possess; she's definitely more florid and closer to Charlotte Brontë that way) and that her characters are built in a similarly typical way (they are traced in a sort of impressionist way as types, but closer inspection reveals greater nuance).

"Charlotte Brontë tried to delay the publication of Villette so that it would not be reviewed along with Mrs. Gaskell’s Ruth. Brontë particularly wanted to prevent the male literary establishment from making women writers into competitors and rivals for the same small space: “‘It is the nature of writers to be invidious,” she wrote to Mrs. Gaskell, but “we shall set them at defiance; they shall not make us foes.”"

I have been using some dead times these past few weeks to go through/purge my latest Project Gutenberg raids, and there are two funny findings I have made:

1- Patricia Brent, Spinster (1918), by Herbert George Jenkins

In general a run-of-the-mill fake dating romance, short and innoffensive, but here's the thing, for anyone familiar with Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey

The love interest is a lieutenant-colonel Bowen (the story is set in the last year of WWI), wounded in action, D.S.O., M.C. now working at the staff

Of course the story and characters are different in several ways, and they are not as charming as Sayers', but the coincidences, the coincidences!

2- The Lonely House (1920) by Marie Belloc Lowndes (sister of Hillaire Belloc)

What I didn't know before downloading this book, is that it is subtitled A Hercules Popeau mystery. Yes, you guessed it, Poirot. But it predates Poirot for a little. The wikipedia page on Poirot puts it this way:

But to say that the name was derived is to understate the situation immensely. Popeau has the physical shape, age, and way of talking and dressing of Poirot. Like Poiret, he's French (though still living in France; the plot of this story happens on a vacation he takes to Monte Carlo with... you won't guess... his friend captain Angus Stuart. A Scottish man, who, believe it or not, falls in love at first sight with our fair protagonist!).

Jules Poiret. Hercule Popeau. Hercule Poirot.

And like, wow, we complain about fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, but if you were into reading many novels in 1920s Britain, there were THREE eccentric, short, plump, dandy-ish, French speaking, British captain adopting sleuths around. We'd have three nickels. Historians 1000 years from now would believe there was a significant number of French and Belgian sleuths traveling England and Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

I have said good things about Verena in the Midst, by E.V. Lucas. His Advisory Ben is EVEN BETTER. I read it today in about two sittings (had doctor's waiting room time to burn) and I finished it with a smile and that sweet glow that finishing a satisfying book gives.

Ben is short for Benita, an efficient, level headed young woman of 22, whose father, a very fussy man, has just remarried. Ben sees this as the moment to leave home and get a job. During a visit to a country family desperate to find a shaker in the middle of nowhere, Ben conceives the idea of setting up an agency to run errands for country people, and generally orient and advice. She leases a place on top of a used books shop, just recently set up by two WWI veterans (the novel is set in the 1920s), gets herself an assistant and an errand boy, and sets up to work.

Like Verena in the Midst, this is another solid light short novel, but this one has much more of a plot. It's also funnier. It has a love triangle that didn't make me cringe. Ben's work is so interesting, and the people that come to her for help and her relatives are also fun and quirky in their own ways. It has a proposal scene that lands.

Verena in the Midst made me want a radio drama. This one made me want a movie.

Maybe producing companies should just hire someone to peruse public domain works instead of so many remakes and sequels.

Anyways, neither will change your life, but I do think the public here would enjoy either or both.

I needed a pick me up today, so I started one of my latest Project Gutenberg Dumpster DiverTM finds, Verena in the Midst, by E.V. Lucas.

It's an epistolary novel set in Britain in 1919. The central character is Miss Verena Raby, a woman in her 40s who owns and lives at a country house in Herefordshire, called Old Place. Early in the year, Verena has an accident on ice, injures her spine, and is therefore confined to bed for a long time. This event kickstarts a chain of letters from friends and family (she has 8 siblings and several nephews and nieces) to and from her.

I'm about 30% in (it's a short book, my kindle estimated 3 hours reading time), and I'm having fun! The style is light and breezy, the story is slice of life-y but there's still some plot to it, and the characters while necessarily not super deep (there's too many of them for that) are defined and interesting enough to keep one reading.

The fact that in one of the first letters a "very old friend" of Verena, Mr. Richard Haven, suggests she gets someone to read to her Emma and Mansfield Park, which he hilariously describes as "men's books far more than women's" definitely didn't hurt my interest XD

British authors writing Italian characters:

I'm really sorry, lately it's taking me a while to answer asks :(

I want to make a full guide on Gaskell at some point... when I have finished reading her work. The fact that I haven't read, for example, Mary Barton or Sylvia's Lovers yet influences my recommendations (but of course anyone who has read them can chime in!)

A lot of people, I daresay most, begin Gaskell by North and South, mostly because the 2004 series is very famous and beloved, so they watch it and go for the book. And probably don't read anything by her again because they are disappointed.

I don't think it's the absolute worst place to begin (Ruth would probably be it; it's a very heavy, tragic, sad novel, a blunt social commentary with some reminiscences of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but not with the dexterity that one has), but it's not a good one; the whole process of writing the book and finishing it was plagued by Dickens being jealous and bothersome, which ended up producing some uneven pacing and dei ex machina. Besides that, it sits in a weird spot where it is too bleak for The Austen ReaderTM but not Gothic enough for The Brontë ReaderTM.

The thing with Gaskell is that she was a prolific author who tried her hand at different genres and subgenres, ad who wrote short stories, novellas, and novels. Where to start will depend a lot on what are you the most interested in reading.

If you want something sort of like Austen, the best bet to get an idea of her style and the tone of her lighter work is Mr Harrison's Confessions. It's a fun, cliche story. If you want to commit to a novel, Wives and Daughters is also light and "austenesque", and vastly considered her best work. It is unfinished, but unfinished very, very close to the end (only the last wrap up of the wrap up is missing, but even then most editions carry an editor's note with an explanation of the general idea of what Gaskell had planned for that before she died).

Six Weeks at Happenheim is a bucolic story set in Germany, about a man recovering from illness.

Cranford is more of a bridge novel, also short-ish, between the lighter and the more melancholy, mournful type of story (such as My Lady Ludlow or Cousin Phillis) of reminiscence she used to write.

The 2007 Cranford series is a mash up of Cranford, My Lady Ludlow, and Mr Harrison's Confessions.

Gaskell also wrote several Gothic stories; I haven't read many of those, but I can recommend The Doom of the Griffiths and Lois the Witch as good examples.

She also wrote what I think was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë, titled The Life of Charlotte Brontë. I got this one as a present this Christmas and it is the next work of hers I intend to read!

So... where to start with Gaskell? Another important thing to keep in mind is that, as a writer, she takes her time to set the mood. She likes her purple prose, and you need to slow down to her pace, specially in her novels. So if you had a hard time with, for example, the rhythm of Jane Eyre, perhaps trying a shorter story first to see how you jive with her style of writing can be a good idea.

In short: if you want more of a Austen-y mood, try either Mr Harrison's Confessions or Wives and Daughters.

If you want more of a mix of humor and melancholy, like a distant cousin to the tone of Sense and Sensibility, try Cranford. Also try Cranford if you think stories about old ladies matter!

If you want to read her most famous work at this point, do try North and South. Just don't take it as completely representative of all her work or her talent as a writer. It is a good representation of the social aspect of her novels, and I have heard very often that it is an interesting complement/contrast with Mary Barton (which was her first novel).

If you want some Gothic goodness, start by The Doom of the Griffiths.

THATSCARLETFLYCATCHER'S 1000 FOLLOWERS CELEBRATION

North and South (1854) by Elizabeth Gaskell, as requested by @fictionadventurer

(click on the picture to enlarge for sharper definition)

Colonel Brandon 🤝 Edward Rochester 🤝 lord Lowborough 🤝 Jean Valjean

Raising a girl who is not their child as a duty they imposed on themselves out of love/pity/guilt with varying success.

The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Gaskell, part 3

Far on in the night there were voices outside reached us in our hiding-place; an angry knocking at the door, and we saw through the chinks the old woman rouse herself up to go and open it for her master, who came in, evidently half drunk.  To my sick horror, he was followed by Lefebvre, apparently as sober and wily as ever. They were talking together as they came in, disputing about something; but the miller stopped the conversation to swear at the old woman for having fallen asleep, and, with tipsy anger, and even with blows, drove the poor old creature out of the kitchen to bed.  Then he and Lefebvre went on talking - about the Sieur de Poissy's disappearance.  It seemed that Lefebvre had been out all day, along with other of my husband's men, ostensibly assisting in the search; in all probability trying to blind the Sieur de Poissy's followers by putting them on a wrong scent, and also, I fancied, from one or two of Lefebvre's sly questions, combining the hidden purpose of discovering us.  

The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 2

A Norman woman, Amante by name, was sent to Les Rochers by the Paris milliner, to become my maid.  She was tall and handsome, though upwards of forty, and somewhat gaunt.  But, on first seeing her, I liked her; she was neither rude nor familiar in her manners, and had a pleasant look of straightforwardness about her that I had missed in all the inhabitants of the château, and had foolishly set down in my own mind as a national want. Amante was directed by M. de la Tourelle to sit in my boudoir, and to be always within call.  He also gave her many instructions as to her duties in matters which, perhaps, strictly belonged to my department of management.  But I was young and inexperienced, and thankful to be spared any responsibility. 

The Grey Woman, by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 1

There is a mill by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany.  There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill; it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg.  The river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle.  Again, further from the river, there is a garden full of willows, and arbours, and flower-beds not well kept, but very profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the arbours together.  In each of these arbours is a stationary table of white painted wood, and light moveable chairs of the same colour and material.