North And South

English author Elizabeth Gaskell’s social novel North and South was published in 1854 and 1855. It is one of her best-known books, along with Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), and it has been televised three times. The 2004 revision reignited interest in the book and drew it to a larger audience. Originally, Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialized, insisted on using North and South as the title of the book instead of Margaret Hale, the protagonist. North and South use a protagonist from southern England to present and comment on the perspectives of mill owners and workers in an industrializing city, in contrast to Gaskell’s first book, Mary Barton (1848), which focused on relations between employers and workers in Manchester from the perspective of the working poor. The fictional industrial town of Milton in the north of England serves as the setting for the book. Margaret Hale relocates to Milton with her parents after being forced to leave her peaceful, rural southern home. She witnesses the Industrial Revolution’s harshness and the initial strikes’ conflicts between employers and employees.