Poetry
Sketches Among the Poor
Blackwood’s Magazine, January, 1837
No. I
This poem was written by Mrs. Gaskell in collaboration with her husband, and is her first published work. Writing to Mary Howitt in 1838, she says: “We once thought of trying to write sketches among the poor, rather in the manner of Crabbe (now don’t think this presumptuous), but in a more seeing-beauty spirit; and one—the only one—was published in Blackwood, January, 1837. But I suppose we spoke our plan near a dog rose, for it never went any further.” The poem is interesting, as it foreshadows Mrs. Gaskell’s sympathetic insight into the lives of the poor, and is a worthy prelude to her first novel, for the character of “Mary” is based on the same original as “Old Alice” in Mary Barton.
In childhood’s days, I do remember me
Of one dark house behind an old elm tree,
By gloomy streets surrounded, where the flower