Book description
With an essay by V. S. Pritchett.
'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.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
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 Bront , 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.
