Elizabeth Gaskell's Contributions to the Works of William Howitt

The Significance of Victorian England for the Cottagecore Aesthetic

“…In fact, Gaskell's first stories were published in Howitt's Journal of Literature andPopular Progress (1847-1848), which both William Howitt and his wife Mary were its founders and editors. She was also well aware of Howitt's publication, contributing both a detailed description of Clopton Hall for the first edition, wherein she is referenced as a correspondent, including some information and corrections for the second edition in 1840 (Martin, 1985). Some of Howitt's descriptions of cottages from an outward view are somewhat comparable with Gaskell's passage about Molly's arrival at Croston Heath: "Where they [the cottages] happen to stand separate, on open heaths, and in glens of the hills, nature throws around them so much of wild freedom and picturesqueness as makes them very agreeable" (Howitt, 1840, p. 121).…”