The Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell foretold her own death, confiding early in 1865 that she did not expect to see out the year.

The prediction appears in a collection of letters by the writer and her closest friends, Mary Green and her daughter, Isabella, acquired by the John Rylands Library in Manchester.

In one letter written a month after Mrs Gaskell’s death, in November 1865, Isabella Green recounts how the writer had said that she did not expect to live beyond December.

Mrs Gaskell, whose novel Cranford was televised recently, died aged 55, leaving her novel Wives and Daughters incomplete. The manuscript, also at the library, poignantly breaks off at the top of the page.

Fran Baker, the library’s archivist, said: “The reference to Gaskell foreseeing her own death is intriguing. By early November 1865, she claimed to be feeling more energetic and in better health than she had done for years.

“She was busy preparing a house in Alton, Hampshire, which she had secretly bought in the hope of persuading her husband, William, to retire there.

She believed that his life in Manchester was bad for his health, not least because of the strain that he put on himself with overwork.

“On November 12 she was at the new house chatting over tea with three of her daughters when she collapsed into the arms of her daughter Meta and died instantly. Her husband had no idea she was there.

“Isabella wrote in a letter to her brother that Gaskell 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.”

The cache of letters, which remained in the Green family, was brought to the library’s attention by the Gaskell Society.

Elsewhere, Mrs Gaskell’s letters revolve around her daily life, the constant stream of visitors and her literary progress. In one letter she expresses concern about how her novel Ruth, published in 1853, which deals with unmarried motherhood, would be received.

“I still think it probable that many may refuse to read any book of that kind,” she wrote.

Documents from the archive will be on display at the library until February.

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