North and South (Illustrated) - edition by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Rachel Lay. Literature & Fiction eBooks @ .
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▪ This book includes 10 unique illustrations that are relevant to its content.
North and South is an industrial novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It first appeared as a 22-part weekly serial from September 1854 to January 1855 in the magazine Household Words. It was published as a book, in two volumes, in 1855.
The novel is set in the fictional town of Milton-Northern, in the industrial-era North of England. The heroine, Margaret Hale, is a new arrival in the town. She remembers her former home in the South as a rural paradise, and is critical of industrialism. Her opinions are challenged through her relationships with mill-owner John Thornton and the working class Higgins family.
North and South was adapted for television by the BBC in 1975 and again in 2004.
North and South (Illustrated) - edition by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Rachel Lay. Literature & Fiction eBooks @ .
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North and South (Illustrated) - edition by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Rachel Lay. Literature & Fiction eBooks @ . Reviews
Elizabeth Gaskell's "North and South" is a skillful portrayal of real people facing real-life struggles and temptations. It shows the reader both sides of the struggle between employer and employees in the Victorian setting of a smoky manufacturing town, as the heroine, Margaret Hale, meets people on both sides and embarks upon womanhood burdened yet enriched by what she experiences. I highly recommend it for adults and teens - men as well as women! This particular, free edition contains some obvious editorial errors, such as sentences which were not divided by punctuation. However, it was quite readable.
The title refers to the north and south counties of England, the north industrial, the south rural. Young woman from south is forced to move with her family to a northern industrial town where she butts heads with a mill owner.
Themes include workers' rights; the tragic conditions of the poor and oppressed (most of whom are very honorable people); rampant disease (affecting all classes); unrequited love; familial devotion; spiritual faith; the price of success.
Hard to put down. Well developed characters in a character-driven story. Thoughtful, sometimes disturbing, and often romantic.
Historical setting early 1800's.
While I fully enjoy the actual novel North and South, this particular reproduction is not at all what I expected. It is titled and advertised that it is a hardcover version of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. It is NOT. The first few pages reference the constitutions of the free masons, then there are about 100+ blank pages, then pages 151-154 of the ending of North and South. Ridiculous - this should not be advertised as the North and South novel. There is a disclaimer page that "as a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, etc." but nowhere did it say that this didn't really have the novel at all. I feel this is mis-representation for something that costs over $20.
I have watched the series often because it is one of my favorites. As happens often the book is so much richer and sweeter, although I still consider the TV series one of my favorites. An excellent read that takes you into the center of another world, at another time!
Don't get me wrong--Gaskell's novel is magnificent--a 5+++++. Where Dickens's portrait of England's early manufacturers and nascent factory system in Hard Times is caricature, Gaskell's is nuanced and complex. I wish this novel were better known and appreciated. My low rating is for the Penguin Classics edition, with introduction and notes by one Patricia Ingham, who is identified as a Fellow in English at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Since I was re-reading the novel, I disregarded the spoiler warning and read the introduction first. Apart from a few useful facts--e.g., that Gaskell originally intended to call her novel Margaret Hale after the protagonist but changed the title before publication in Dickens's Household Words, the introduction is mostly prefab class-and-gender analysis delivered in imprecise and inelegant jargon "[Margaret] problematizes both the contemporary major discourses that justify [the workers'] emiseration paternalism and 'the struggle for existence.' " The notes, by the way, which are not preceded by a spoiler warning, are full of spoilers; within the first couple of pages, at least two major plot developments are revealed. The notes are also full of Ms. Ingham's superfluous and condescending explanations of the significance of events and textual features (quotations, allusions, etc.) as if the benighted reader needs her guidance at every step. Finally, this edition is poorly produced tiny font, poor contrast between page and type, and an inside margin so skimpy that it is difficult to read the full line without breaking the binding. What's happening at Penguin? at Oxford?
I read the book, like many other reviewers here, after I had watched the brilliant BBC miniseries starring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe. I definitely agree with the comments of many reviewers here that you somehow seem to develop a finer appreciation of the nuances of both after doing that.
A lot of reviewers have covered the ground admirably on the story itself, so I won't go into too much detail on that. In addition to the fine development of plot and characters alike, what I found refreshing about the novel were
a. Unlike a few other writers of her time, Elizabeth Gaskell focuses a lot more on the thought processes and feelings of the male characters in the novel. For example, you don't get to hear a lot of what Darcy or Edward Ferrars are thinking in Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility, except almost tangentially. In sharp contrast, Mrs. Gaskell gives quite a detailed peep into what John Thornton and Richard Hale are thinking, throughout the novel. As someone who is always interested in the differences in thought processes between the sexes, I found this to be refreshingly different from other novels of the time.
b. Being in business, it was quite a new experience to read about John Thornton's evolution first as a business owner and then as a "leader", to use that overused term of today. Mrs. Gaskell appears to have a remarkably sophisticated understanding of both management and labor issues. The examples that stand out in my mind - John Thornton's increasing interest in exploring a better construct for labor-management relations beyond the mere "cash nexus" (towards the end of the novel), and his practice of building what we would call a business case today, as he asks Nicholas Higgins to put some figures together for the new cafeteria.
c. A valuable peep into the mores of the time - for example, despite being fond of Bessy Higgins, Margaret recoils in horror at the thought of visiting her after Bessy's death, a point glossed over in the BBC mini-series, - it gives you a rare insight into things like death and burial customs of the time,.
I must agree with a few other reviewers that the last few chapters seem a little rushed, but from an overall perspective, it is hard to beat this novel for its pure wholesome enjoyment value - more serious and deep than a Pride and Prejudice, and still light enough for people like me who cannot take Thomas Hardy. A definite five stars!
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