Cranford writer 'predicted death'

Writer Elizabeth Gaskell foretold her own death months before suffering a fatal heart attack, it has emerged. The Cranford author's eerie prediction was revealed in a collection of letters recently acquired by the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library. The correspondence is between Gaskell, her friend Mary Green and Mary's daughter Isabella, among others. The university library said the letters were an important addition to its existing Gaskell collection. The author of Cranford - which famously depicts life in Knutsford, Cheshire, where she grew up - died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1865, leaving her last novel Wives and Daughters a chapter short of completion. The novel's manuscript, also kept at the Rylands, poignantly breaks off at the top of a page. John Rylands Library archivist Fran Baker said the archive shed "interesting new light" on Gaskell and her daughters. "The reference to Gaskell foreseeing her own death is intriguing," said Ms Baker - BBC