Elizabeth and Ruth

Synopsis

Manchester 1849. Elizabeth Gaskell, newly famous author of Mary Barton, visits a young Irish prostitute in Manchester’s New Bailey prison. The girl is about to be discharged onto the Manchester streets, where her old life of poverty and violence await her. Elizabeth is determined to help her, but few people will employ an ex-prostitute from prison. In desperation, Elizabeth writes to Charles Dickens for advice.

Based on the real correspondence between Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, Elizabeth and Ruth tells a story of hypocrisy and suppression, and how Elizabeth navigates the censorship and prejudice of the day to help the young girl and to write the novel about her that will ultimately be banned and burned after publication.

Praise for Previous Work

‘Michael is rare in taking on the ethical gravity of evil, turning it over and over in her stony prose … what more can we ask for in our fiction writers than such honesty, such fierceness.’ —Natasha Walter, Literary Review

‘Livi Michael takes the shoddiness of the world and transmutes it into grace.’ —Fay Weldon, Literary Review

‘Confronting themes of memory, trauma, childhood violence, criminality and responsibility … to give voice to our hidden, “unspoken” pasts.’ —Hal Jensen, TLS