North and South: Elizabeth Gaskell

ISBN-10: 1718665288
ISBN-13: 9781718665286
Series: North and South
Pages: 258
Language: English
Published: 2018-05-02
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell

Description

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. North and South is a social novel by English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels. First published in serial form in Household Words in 1854-1855 and in volume form in 1855. Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale happily returns home from London to the idyllic southern village of Helstone after her cousin Edith marries Captain Lennox. She lived for almost 10 years in the city with Edith and wealthy Aunt Shaw to learn to be a young lady. Margaret has refused an offer of marriage from the captain's brother, Henry, an up-and-coming barrister. Her life is turned upside down when her father, the local pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience; his intellectual honesty has made him a dissenter. At the suggestion of Mr. Bell, his old friend from Oxford, he settles with his wife and daughter in Milton-Northern (where Mr. Bell was born and owns property). The industrial town in Darkshire (a textile-producing region) manufactures cotton and is in the middle of the Industrial Revolution; masters and workers are clashing in the first organised strikes.