North And South

Brought to you by Manor House Books, this
classic novel has been adapted for a modern readership by bestselling
historical romance author D.G. Rampton.

North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell, was written at the request
of Charles Dickens and published anonymously in serial form in his
magazine Household Words from 1854 to 1855, and then published in book
form in 1855. The story, which explores the contrast between the values
of rural southern England and the industrial north, has a psychological
complexity that anticipates George Eliot’s later novels of provincial
life.
The novel is set in the fictional industrial town of Milton
in the north, where Margaret Hale settles with her parents after being
uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire after her father leaves
the church. Witnessing the brutal reality of the industrial revolution,
and sympathising with the plight of local mill workers, she clashes with
mill-owner and self-made man John Thornton, while fighting a growing
attraction to him. Gaskell’s novel cleverly pairs personal relations
with social issues, creating one of the most unique heroines in
Victorian literature.