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.

Inspired by the real correspondence between Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, Elizabeth and Ruth tells the unforgettable story of two very different women whose lives become inextricably intertwined.

Praise for This Book

‘The best historical fiction brings the past in so close that it feels like a parallel present. Livi Michael's Elizabeth and Ruth is a gripping upstairs-downstairs social-realist horror tale of sorts. Michael brilliantly evokes a 19th-century Manchester hopelessly strung between the church and the sweatshop, conjuring a lost industrial world which is so tactile and vivid that you can smell it and taste it and feel its cold breath on your neck.’ —Xan Brooks

Reviews of This Book

‘Livi Michael is superb at forcing the reader to confront uncomfortable questions about poverty and the well-meaning outsiders who seek to end it. Recreating the genesis of Gaskell’s most controversial novel, Michael explores the massive strain of a woman juggling the demands of motherhood, writing, and social campaigning in industrial Manchester. This is a powerful look at the ‘fallen’ and the ‘good’ – and the complicated, often heartbreaking reality of those trying to bridge the gap between the two.’ —Antonia Senior, The Times

‘The Best New Fiction Manchester, 1849, and a newly famous Elizabeth Gaskell has taken an interest in the case of a 16-year-old Irish seamstress, incarcerated for prostitution. Finding herself unable to offer the girl practical assistance, Gaskell turns to Charles Dickens for advice. From their real correspondence, Michael plucks a pungent tale of hypocrisy and prejudice that nimbly probes the limits of activism in Victorian England.’ —Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail

‘Michael’s prose has a vividness one can smell and touch... This novel is both readable and not an ‘easy’ read, and I thoroughly recommend it.’ —Katherine Mezzacappa, Historical Novel Society

‘The prose is fierce and furious, the social conditions sickening and rendered clearly … A reminder of what life was like for all during the industrial revolution.’ —Jackie Law, neverimitate

‘A story of hypocrisy, injustice and the obstacles against social reform … I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to fans of the historical fiction genre.’ —Heather Magee, The Bookbag

‘A riveting and touching novel about the rigidity of convention and the limits of compassion … vivid scenes bring the two-tiered Manchester society to life. Gaskell was the subtler, more elegant chronicler.’ —Rebecca Foster, Bookish Beck

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