North and South (World's Classics S.)

by Angus Easson (Editor), Angus Easson (Editor), Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1982

  $3.37

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.72

  'she tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.' North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the conflict between Margaret's ready sympathy with the workers and her growing attraction to the charismatic mill ownder, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate.

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $18.56

  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.