Elizabeth Gaskell's Visit to Chatsworth

£15 per person

On 12 September 1857, the writer Elizabeth Gaskell and her daughter arrived at Chatsworth, showing their green admission ticket to gain entry.

They were shown around by a housekeeper, but their tour was interrupted by an invitation to luncheon and an announcement that rooms had been prepared for them. They therefore made the fairy-tale transition from tourists to honoured guests of the 6th Duke of Devonshire.

Join Head of Archive & Library, Fran Baker, to learn about Gaskell’s account of her visit to Chatsworth in the context of her own writing, and to explore what the episode can tell us about Gaskell’s professionalism as an author, the relationship between writers and aristocratic patrons in the age of the professional writer, and middle-class social mobility in the mid-19th century.

This talk forms part of an exciting programme of events supporting our 2026 exhibition, House of Stories: Tales from the Chatsworth Library.

For further details please see here.