The Old Nurse's Story: A Ghost Story for Christmas

Elizabeth Gaskell, born in 1810 in Chelsea, London, was an influential English novelist and short story writer who captured Victorian society's diverse realities. Losing her mother at a young age, she was raised in Knutsford, Cheshire, where she found inspiration for her later works, especially her beloved novel Cranford. Her compassionate outlook on social issues was deeply influenced by her Unitarian upbringing and her husband, William Gaskell, a minister.Her writing career began with her novel Mary Barton in 1848, a response to the poverty and inequality she observed in Manchester. Gaskell's novels often focused on industrial England's struggles, as seen in North and South, where she portrayed class conflicts and the plight of factory workers. Her works offered a powerful lens on the changing social landscape of Victorian England, with a focus on humanizing the working class.Beyond her fiction, Gaskell was also a respected biographer, best known for her biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Her sensitive, yet candid portrayal in The Life of Charlotte Brontë helped shape Brontë's posthumous reputation, even as Gaskell discreetly omitted certain details to maintain her friend's privacy. Gaskell's legacy endures as a pioneering social realist who used storytelling to illuminate and challenge the norms of her time.

Seth is the cartoonist behind the comic-book series Palookaville, which started in the stone age as a pamphlet and is now a semi-annual hardcover. His comics have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Best American Comics, and McSweeney's Quarterly. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications including the cover of the New Yorker, The Walrus, and Canadian Notes & Queries. He is the subject of a recent documentary from the National Film Board of Canada, Seth's Dominion. Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario, with his wife Tania and their two cats in an old house he has named "Inkwell's End."