North and South

As related now as when it was first revealed, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South skilfully weaves a compelling love story right into a conflict between the pursuit of revenue and humanitarian beliefs. This Penguin Classics version is edited with an introduction by Patricia Ingham.

When her father leaves the Church in a disaster of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her snug house in Hampshire to maneuver together with her household to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new environment within the industrial city of Milton, Margaret turns into conscious of the poverty and struggling of native mill staff and develops a passionate sense of social justice. That is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his therapy of his workers masks a deeper attraction. In North and South Gaskell skilfully fused particular person feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale created some of the authentic heroines of Victorian literature.

In her introduction Patricia Ingham examines Elizabeth Gaskell’s therapy of geographical, financial and sophistication variations, and the female and male roles portrayed within the novel. This version additionally contains additional studying, notes and a helpful glossary.

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) was born in London, however grew up within the north of England within the village of Knutsford. In 1832 she married the Reverend William Gaskell and had 4 daughters, and one son who died in infancy. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was revealed in 1848, profitable the eye of Charles Dickens, and most of her later work was revealed in his journals, together with Cranford (1853), serialised in Dickens’s Family Phrases. She was additionally a lifelong good friend of Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote.

For those who loved North and South, you would possibly like Jane Austen’s Persuasion, additionally obtainable in Penguin Classics.

‘[An] admirable story … stuffed with character and energy’
Charles Dickens