Philip Hepburn, Stephen Freeman and the American Context of Sylvia’s Lovers

Sylvia’s Lovers is a novel about war. It is a historical novel set in the years 1793-1800 during the Napoleonic wars, and written by Elizabeth Gaskell in the years 1859-62 when the American Civil War broke out, in April 1861. Examining Gaskell’s cor- respondence with Charles Eliot Norton in the years 1861-63 and the articles Norton wrote in support of the War and the anti-slavery cause, this paper explores the way in which the news coming from America and the debates on the contemporary events left a significant mark on the second part of the novel. The implied reference to the context of the Ameri- can Civil War would shed new light on Gaskell’s narrative choices concerning the plot and the main male character’s development, which has been substantially overlooked.