Consists of individual author folders containing photographs (carte-de-visite and cabinet; some autographed) and postcards of, and article clippings relating to, the authors, as well as miscellaneous ephemera. Arranged alphabetically by author.
Note: The following folders of "Author Portraits, etc." are referred to by Alexander D. Wainwright, former curator of the Parrish Collection, as his author "iconography files." See list appended at end of this section for additional author portraits (Dickens, Hardy, Stevenson, Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope) currently located in the Taylor Room and elsewhere in the Library.
Arranged alphabetically by author.
View digital content
Includes "St. Valentine's Day. 1864": a mock-valentine sent to Gaskell, apparently by her Publisher George Smith, of Smith, Elder & Co. A pen-and-ink drawing, approx. 10" square, with central scene surrounded by 19 additional scenes, and a bottom panel of eight lines of rhymed text pleading for more copy. The central picture shows Elizabeth Gaskell in a farmyard, bearing a milkmaid's yoke and looking at a cow, whilst (almost surreptitiously) handing a manuscript to a kneeling George Smith. This is surrounded by the9 smaller images, presumably illustrating Cousin Phillis, rather like a medieval stained-glass window or a panel of a saint's life. In fact Gaskell, who is said to have much preferred dealing with Smith rather than the editor, did contribute further to the Cornhill: she was already planning her next – and, as it turned out, final – novel, Wives and Daughters, which began to appear in the August number of the same year.