Lives of Victorian Literary Figures: Elizabeth Gaskell, the Carlyles and John Ruskin Pt. III - Lives of Victorian Literary Figures (Hardback)

The volumes in this third set of anthologies focus on writers for whom 'the centre' was a pressing concern. Ruskin grew up in suburban London; in later life, he settled in the Lake District . Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle moved in the opposite direction - from rural Scotland to London's Cheyne Walk. Elizabeth Gaskell lived and worked near Manchester all her life; by doing so she became a writer with a national reputation who enjoyed contacts throughout London's literary world. These different trajectories are all responses to the dominance of London over Victorian literary culture and Victorian society more generally.Should one retreat and so avoid the distractions of the literary world? Should one take part in and seek to dominate that world? Should one maintain a provincial identity, neither backing away from nor immersing oneself in the capital's agenda? The lives of these authors epitomise these questions. They reveal the various different, viable ways of making a writing career that these difficulties impose.