Private Voices

These two diaries, by the nineteenth-century novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and her cousin Sophia Holland, provide us with uniquely personal and revealing accounts of Victorian womanhood and motherhood. This is the first critical edition of the Gaskell diary and the first ever publication of the Holland diary. The Gaskells were among the first generation of parents to experience the benefits and burdens of an abundance of child-care literature. Both Elizabeth and Sophia reveal themselves here as anxious to be seen as conscientious and well-informed mothers, but as confused as contemporary parents by the conflicting advice to be found within the pages of the so-called 'experts'. As a piece of social history, these diaries document the challenges, dilemmas and rewards of Victorian parenthood. As a piece of literature, there is no doubt that, in cultivating the powers of observation to be found in her diary, Elizabeth was laying the foundation for the wider social vision to be found in her novels. Both wor