North and South (Penguin Classics)

by Dorothy Collin (Editor), Martin Dodsworth (Introduction), Elizabeth Gaskell (Author), Martin Dodsworth (Introduction)

• Used

  Paperback
  1970

  $3.35

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.35

  When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. This is intensified by her tempestuous relationship with the mill-owner and self-made man, John Thornton, as their fierce opposition over his treatment of his employees masks a deeper attraction. In North and South , Elizabeth Gaskell skillfully fused individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale created one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature.

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $19.29

  This Norton Critical Edition of her best-selling novel is annotated and edited by preeminent Gaskell scholar Alan Shelston. Contexts includes contemporary reviews and correspondence related to North and South, along with the full text of Gaskell's 1850 short story Lizzie Leigh, which, like North and South, is set in industrial Manchester and deals with strong working women. This topic is further addressed in Bessie Rayner Parkes's essay on Victorian working women. Criticism collects eleven assessments of the novel, among them Louis Cazamian's 1904 study of industrial fiction and Hilary Schor's recent study of North and South in the context of discourse analysis. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.