Elizabeth Gaskell Patricia Ingham Popular Books

Elizabeth Gaskell Patricia Ingham Biography & Facts

North and South is a social novel published in 1854–55 by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times (1966, 1975 and 2004). At first, Gaskell wanted the novel to be titled after the heroine, Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialised, insisted on North and South. Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton (1848), focused on relations between employers and workers in Manchester from the perspective of the working poor; North and South uses a protagonist from southern England to show and comment on the perspectives of mill owners and workers in an industrialising city. The novel is set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the north of England. Forced to leave her home in the unruffled, rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton. She witnesses the ruthless world wreaked by the Industrial Revolution, seeing employers and workers clashing in the first strikes. Sympathetic to the needy (whose courage and tenacity she admires and among whom she makes friends), she clashes with John Thornton: a nouveau riche cotton-mill owner who is scornful of his workers. The novel traces her growing understanding of the complexity of labour relations and their influence on well-meaning mill owners and her conflicted relationship with John Thornton. Gaskell based her depiction of Milton on Manchester, where she lived as the wife of a Unitarian minister. Publication Serialisation North and South originally appeared in 20 weekly episodes from September 1854 to January 1855 in Household Words, edited by Charles Dickens. During this period Charles Dickens dealt with the same theme in Hard Times (also a social novel), which was published in the same magazine from April to August 1854. Hard Times, which shows Manchester (the satirical Coketown) in a negative light, challenged Gaskell and made the writing of her own novel more difficult; she had to ascertain that Dickens would not write about a strike. Gaskell found the time and technical constraints of serialised fiction particularly trying. She had planned to write 22 episodes but was "compelled to desperate compression" to limit the story to 20. North and South was less successful than Hard Times. On 14 October 1854, after six weeks, sales dropped so much that Dickens complained about what he called Gaskell's "intractability" because she resisted his demands for concision. He found the story "wearisome to the last degree". Title The novel's title (imposed by Dickens) focuses on the difference in lifestyle between rural southern England, inhabited by the landed gentry and agricultural workers, and the industrial north, populated by capitalist manufacturers and poverty-stricken mill workers; the north–south division was cultural and geographical. The story centers on haughty Margaret Hale, who learns to overcome her prejudices against the North in general and charismatic manufacturer John Thornton in particular. Gaskell would have preferred to call the novel Margaret Hale (as she had done in 1848 for her novel Mary Barton), but Dickens prevailed. He wrote in a 26 July 1854 letter that "North South" seemed better, encompassing more and emphasising the opposition between people who are forced by circumstances to meet face-to-face. Working on the final chapters of the novel in December at Lea Hurst, Florence Nightingale's family home near Matlock in Derbyshire, Gaskell wrote that she would rather call her novel Death and Variations because "there are five dead, each beautifully consistent with the personality of the individual". This remark, although probably a joke, emphasises the importance of death in the story. Death affects Margaret profoundly, gradually encouraging her independence; this allows Gaskell to analyse the character's deep emotions and focus on the social system's harshness in the deaths of Boucher and Bessy. Book Chapman & Hall (London) first published the novel in 1855 as two volumes of 25 and 27 chapters each. Chapman & Hall issued a second edition in 1855 due to the presence of two paragraphs from Volume II, Chapter xix in Volume II, Chapter xxii. To align the pagination, the second edition adds an extra paragraph in Volume II, Chapter xxiii. That year, Harper and Brothers published it in New York and Tauchnitz published the more-complete second edition in Leipzig as part of a Collection of English Writers. Many editions were published during Gaskell's lifetime. The text of the book, particularly the ending, differs significantly from that of the serialised episodes. Gaskell included a brief preface saying that due to the restrictive magazine format, she could not develop the story as she wished: "Various short passages have been inserted, and several new chapters added". She tried to evade the limitations of a serialised novel by elaborating on events after the death of Mr. Hale and adding four chapters: the first and last chapters and two chapters on the visits by Mr. Bell to London and by Margaret and Mr. Bell to Helstone. This edition also adds chapter titles and epigraphs. The preface concludes with a quotation from the conclusion of John Lydgate's Middle-English fable, The Churl and the Bird (spelling modernised). Loreau and Mrs. H. of Lespine, "with the authorisation of the Author", translated the novel into French using the first revised edition. It was published in Paris by Hachette in 1859, and reprinted at least twice: in 1860 as Marguerite Hale (Nord et Sud) and in 1865 as Nord et Sud. Plot Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale has lived for almost 10 years in London with her cousin Edith and her wealthy Aunt Shaw, but when Edith marries Captain Lennox, Margaret happily returns home to the southern village of Helstone. 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. Margaret initially finds the bustling, smoky town of Milton harsh and strange, and she is upset by its poverty. Mr. Hale (in reduced financial circumstances) works as a tutor; one of his pupils is the wealthy and influential manufacturer John Thornton, master of Marlborough Mills. From the outset, Margaret and Thornton are at odds with each other; she sees him as coarse and unfeeling, and he sees her as haughty. He is attracted .... Discover the Elizabeth Gaskell Patricia Ingham popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Elizabeth Gaskell Patricia Ingham books.