North and South

1855

Special Collections PR4710 N6 1855

London: Chapman and Hall

In 1848, with the appearance her first novel, Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) found fame. Charles Dickens was taken with her writing, and published in his periodical, Household Words, many of her works, including North and South. With a focus on social problems, Gaskell used the North (fictional industrial Milton) and South (a rural area) to help play out the conflict between workers, landed gentry, capitalist manufacturers, and employers. In 1897, an anthology celebrating women novelists included Gaskell, who was deemed ‘pre-eminent’, possessing a ‘genius which time, fashion or progress cannot dim or take from.’