ELIZABETH Gaskell predicted her own death almost a year before it happened.

The author of Cranford, which was a thinly-veiled account of life in her home town of Knutsford, told an acquaintance she would die before the end of 1865.

That November - aged just 55 - she suffered a fatal heart attack, dying in her daughter’s arms.

The premonition came to light after a stash of letters passed down through generations of the Green family - friends of Mrs Gaskell - were bought for £40,000 by the University of Manchester.

Henry Green was the minister at Brook Street Chapel, where Mrs Gaskell was buried, and the Gaskells and Greens each had four daughters, who were all friends.

A month after Mrs Gaskell died Isabella Green wrote to her brother and told him the writer had said she ‘did not expect to live thro’ the year’.

‘People often have presentiments like this, which are forgotten when they don’t come true,’ Isabella wrote.

John Rylands Library archivist Fran Baker said last week that she had been surprised to read the letter.

“Mrs Gaskell had a heart complaint and she liked her food as well, which didn’t help because she didn’t eat particularly healthily,” she said.

“But her death was totally unexpected. She had gone to church that morning and she was secretly buying a house in Hampshire for her husband and her to retire to.”

Joan Leach, founder of The Gaskell Society, said the strain of buying the house and finishing her novel Wives and Daughters could have been too much for the writer.

“She had said at that time that she’d never felt so well in her life but she had been under pressure,” she said.

Happy ending “She was with three of her daughters at the house and they had been furnishing it when she died in mid-sentence.”

Like her final phrase, Mrs Gaskell’s final book was also left unfinished.

The last chapter was penned by Frederick Greenwood, editor of the Cornhill, which was serialising the novel.

Mrs Gaskell had let it be known she was planning a happy ending.

Now the manuscript for Wives and Daughters and the Gaskell letters are both on display at the Deansgate library until February 1.

The owner of the archive, Jean Jamison, a descendant of Isabella Green, wanted the documents to be available to Gaskell fans and historians.

“It was sold to us for less than it would have been on the open market,” said Ms Baker.

“The vendor was very keen for it to come to the North West alongside the Gaskell manuscripts.”

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