North and South

Gaskell, Elizabeth
Mrs Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson in London in 1810. Her mother Eliza, the niece of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, died when she was a child. Much of her childhood was spent in Cheshire, where she lived with an aunt at Knutsford, a town she would later immortalise as Cranford. In 1832, she married a Unitarian minister, William Gaskell (who had a literary career of his own), and they settled in Manchester. The industrial surroundings offered her inspiration for her novels. Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. The best-known of her other novels are Cranford (1853) and North and South (1855). Elizabeth met Charlotte Brontë in 1850, and they struck up a great friendship. After Charlotte's death in 1855, her father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography to counteract gossip and speculation. The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857. Gaskell was also a skilled proponent of the ghost story. Her last novel, Wives and Daughters, said by many to be her most mature work remained unfinished at the time of her death in 1865.

Forced to move from the rural tranquillity of southern England to the turbulent northern mill town of Milton, Margaret Hale takes an instant dislike to the dirt and noise that seems to characterize her new home and its inhabitants - even the handsome and charismatic cotton mill owner, John Thornton. But as she begins to settle in, and to understand the nature of the surrounding poverty and injustice, events conspire to throw her and Thornton together. Amidst the chaos of industrial unrest, they must learn to overcome the prejudices of class and circumstance and admit their feelings for one another.

One of literature's greatest romances, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is both an incisive social commentary and an electric portrayal of all-conquering love.

This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of North and South features an afterword by Kathryn White.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Forced to move from the rural tranquillity of southern England to the turbulent northern mill town of Milton, Margaret Hale takes an instant dislike to the dirt and noise that seems to characterize her new home and its inhabitants - even the handsome and charismatic cotton mill owner, John Thornton. But as she begins to settle in events conspire to throw her and Thornton together.

Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian love story, set in the mill towns of the industrial North of England