North and South (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Gaskell, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140434240 ISBN 13: 9780140434248

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1996

Synopsis

As relevant now as when it was first published, this classic tale weaves a love story with the clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals

"[An] admirable story ... full of character and power" —Charles Dickens

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 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 Gaskell skilfully fused individual feeling with social concern, and in Margaret Hale created one of the most original heroines of Victorian literature. In her introduction Patricia Ingham examines Elizabeth Gaskell's treatment of geographical, economic and class differences, and the male and female roles portrayed in the novel. This edition also includes further reading, notes and a useful glossary.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Ingham is Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has written on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. she is the General Editor of all Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics and has edited Gaskell's North and South for the series.

From the Back Cover

From her home ground, her father's comfortably middle-class living in Hampshire and her aunt's establishment in Harley Street, Margaret is exiled to the ugly northern industrial town of Milton. Surprisingly, her social consciousness awakens. It is intensified by a relationship with the local mill-owner, Thornton, that combines passionate attraction with fierce opposition. The novel explores the exploitation of the working class, linking the plight of workers with that of women and probing the myth and reality of the 'north-south divide'.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140434240
• ISBN 13: 9780140434248
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496
• Editor: Ingham Patricia