My Lady Ludlow

My Lady Ludlow is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It appeared in the magazine Household Words in 1858, and was republished in Round the Sofa in 1859, with framing passages added at the start and end. It recounts the daily lives of the widowed Countess of Ludlow of Hanbury and the spinster Miss Galindo, whose father was a Baronet, and their caring for other single women and girls. It is also concerned with Lady Ludlow's man of business, Mr Horner, and a poacher's son named Harry Gregson whose education he provides for. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, (née Stevenson; 29 September 1810 - 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Brontë. In this biography, she only wrote the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life, the rest she left out, deciding that certain, more salacious aspects of her life were better kept hidden. Some of Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851-53), North and South (1854-55), and Wives and Daughters (1865).