Information
Programme
Abstracts
The conference was held in the Geoffrey Manton building, MMU

Excursion leaflets
All excursions
A Day out!
Monday events

Overview
Elizabeth Gaskell is the most important of the nineteenth century novelists of industrial society. She is Manchester’s most significant literary figure, and her works are a reminder of the nineteenth century city’s status as a cultural (and cosmopolitan) centre of international significance, also eminent in visual, dramatic and musical arts. Gaskell’s writings are an entry, too, into the broader social problems of industrialisation and an urban revolution that was to spread around the globe. Although she chose a number of themes in her writing it is the industrial texts that are the intended focus here. The aim is also to encourage papers that take a broader interpretation of the conference title.

Gaskell’s era was of considerable intellectual importance in the making of the modern world. In seeking papers which explore the broader intellectual and cultural context and significance of Gaskell and her era, this conference will take her literary legacy as a jumping off point for the consideration of cultural pasts and presents, for example, the construction of place identities and notions of cultural regeneration. This conference occurs at a particularly appropriate time, as Manchester applies for World Heritage status.

Contributions which are comparative or interdisciplinary in nature or which address other aspects of the conference theme are welcome, as are exhibitions and multi-media presentations.

Organised by:
Manchester Centre for Regional History
Gaskell Society
Manchester Metropolitan University
English Heritage