ABSTRACT
327‘Shams’ was probably EG’s first article for Fraser’s Magazine, published in the number for February 1863 (67, pp. 265–72). She had known Fraser’s’ editor J. A. Froude for some time, having met him in Manchester through her friends the Dukinfield Darbishires, when he was acting as tutor to their sons. The friendship was cemented during the Gaskells’ holiday at Skelwith, near Ambleside in the summer of 1849, when the Darbishires were staying nearby. Froude introduced her to a number of young men from Oxford, including the German philologist Max Müller, and Robert Morier, later a diplomat. His liberal sympathies, and his later friendship with the Christian Socialists Charles Kingsley and J. M. Ludlow further extended their interlocking circles of friends.
