She stood by the tea-table in a light-coloured muslin gown, which had a good deal of pink about it. She looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless, daintiness.

Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society including the very poor and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell née Stevenson (29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865) often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era.