North and South

Plot

'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?'

Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, she develops a passionate sense of social justice, and a turbulent relationship with mill-owner John Thornton.

"North and South" depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal of what divides people, and what brings them together.

First published in 1855, North and South has one of the most full, original heroines in Victorian literature, and spurned the contemporary conventions of the novel to give a compelling, nuanced view of class conflict without easy resolution.

About the Author

Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65) herself moved from South to North in her youth, from the London of her childhood to Knutsford and later Manchester. Writer of six novels, numerous short stories and novellas and the biography of her great friend Charlotte Bronte, Gaskell was at first published anonymously but later in her own name. Much of her work was serialised in Charles Dickens's widely-read literary weekly, Household Words. Gaskell's novels Mary Barton, Cranford and Wives and Daughters are also published in the Penguin English Library.