ABSTRACT
This sonnet was first published by A. W. Ward in his ‘Biographical Introduction’ to the Knutsford edition of Gaskell’s works in 1906 (Knutsford, vol. i, pp. xxvi–xxvii). Ward had been given access to family papers and private information when writing EG’s entry for the DNB. His ‘Editor’s Preface’ indicates that further assistance was given by Meta and Julia Gaskell in the preparation of the edition (p. xiii). The poem was presumably printed from a family MS, but the original has not been located. Jenny Uglow (Uglow, p. 92) notes that although the sonnet follows a long tradition of women’s poetry written in grief from childbirth, Gaskell’s sonnet is unconventional in the direct relationship established between mother and child and the realism with which the speaker acknowledges the consolation of another child.
