‘The Sexton’s Hero’

This was the second of three stories Gaskell contributed to the weekly Howitt’s Journal, 2:36 (4 September 1847), pp. 149–52, under the signature ‘Cotton Mather Mills’. For the background to Gaskell’s association with William and Mary Howitt, see Introduction, and the headnote to ‘Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras’, p. 47. A. W. Ward, in his ‘Biographical Introduction’ to the first volume of the Knutsford edition, suggests that the story may have been written as early as 1841, shortly after Gaskell’s tour of the Rhine, much of which was spent in the Howitts’ company (Knutsford, vol. i, p. xxvii). The story explores the concept of a Christian hero ¹ and is set on Morecambe Bay, on the Lancashire coast, an area familiar to her through family holidays spent on a farm at Silverdale, on the south shore of the bay. As with many of the settings for her stories, the details are drawn from memory and are precise. Her familiarity with the area, including the treacherous tides and quick sands of Morecambe Bay is clear. Other stories and articles with Lake District settings were to follow. The Howitt’s Journal version appeared in Littell’s Living Age (Boston), 15 (13 November 1847), pp. 319–22. The story was reprinted in 1850, with ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’, as a six-penny pamphlet for the benefit of the Macclesfield Public Baths and Wash-houses (Manchester: Johnson, Rawson and Co.), a project initiated by her friend Catherine Davenport, later Lady Hatherton. It was republished, in two parts, in the penny weekly The Christian Socialist, 15 and 22 March 1851 (1, pp.159–60; 167–8), and issued, with ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’ in 1855 in a three-penny pamphlet by Chapman and Hall. It was collected in Lizzie Leigh and other Tales (1855), reprinted in The Parish Magazine, 1 (October 1859, pp.145–52), and collected again in Cousin Phillis and other Tales (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1865). The story was translated into French in 1867, ² and included in the 1906 Knutsford edition (Knutsford, vol. i), and in Shorter’s 1911 World’s Classics edition (Shorter, vol. vii). The copy-text is Lizzie Leigh and other Tales (1855).